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CHARLES MINER 



Pennsylvania Pioneer 



by 



CHARLES FRANCIS RICHARDSON, Ph. D. Litt. D. 

and 

ELIZABETH MINER (THOMAS) RICHARDSON. 



Reprinted with slight changes from the Proceedings 

of the Wyoming Historical and Geological 

Society, Volume XIV. 



W1LK.ES-BARRE. PA. 
1916. 



/I 



K 



PREFACE. 

In his later years Hon. Charles Miner spent much time 
burning letters and papers, and some have since been lost, 
notably a large part of his Autobiography, but a good num- 
ber have survived, in the care since his son William P. died, 
of his grand-daughter, Mrs. Anna (Miner) Oliver, who has 
diligently typewritten all the most important ones — no small 
task when the ravages of time and illegibility are taken 
into account. It has been the plan of this memoir to let 
these manuscripts tell their own story as far as possible. 
As it has been prepared not only for the Wyoming Histori- 
cal and Geological Society but for Mr. Miner's descendants, 
it has seemed proper to print some details of especial inter- 
est to the latter, such as somewhat free extracts from his 
love-letters to his wife. Also, at this late date, there has 
seemed no impropriety in publishing letters marked "con- 
fidential". Only modesty caused those to his wife to be 
so guarded, and those from his friends had immediate 
bearing on their own political interests, now matters of 
history. Indeed, without these letters the story of his life 
could hardly have been told. 

The sketch was practically finished, as far as the manu- 
scripts were concerned, with only some points to elucidate 
and annotate, chiefly with regard to the years in Congress, 
when the work fell to my hands. 

The difficulties of tracing out the history of "a Bill" 
through the various official publications of the House in 
early days, with their omissions, lack of complete indices. 



O PREFACE. 

etc., are great, so if error should be found, I beg that I, 
alone, may be held responsible. Also, I have added, here 
and there, matter purtenant and interesting in my opinion, 
but spoiling the symmetry of the volume as originally 
planned. 

Some spellings in the originals, as Brownson for Bron- 
son, have been retained in the text, but corrected in the 
index. In some cases it has been impossible to tell whether 
Mr. Smith — Judge Smith — or General Smith — were one and 
the same man, or not, but what diligence could do to sup- 
ply first names and to decide such questions has been done. 

Elizabeth Miner Richardson. 



CHARLES MINER, 1780-1865. 



I am about to try to tell some parts of the story of a life 
of singular range and usefulness. 

Charles Miner was one of the most original and influ- 
ential of the Pennsylvania editors of the first third of the 
nineteenth century. He was an early promoter of the 
anthracite coal trade, and of canals, as a part of internal 
improvement. As a State legislator his influence ranged 
between fields as widely apart as compulsory vaccination 
and the regulation of bank currency. He made the first 
persistent, long-continued effort on the floor of the House 
looking toward the final extinction of slavery. Like the 
Sage of Monticello, he diffused moral and political advice, 
while at the same time concerning himself with the mate- 
rial welfare of State and Nation. Like Franklin, by his 
essays he made sounder the life of his time. He wrote, 
from original investigations, the standard history, never 
to be displaced, of the Wyoming Valley, the massacre of 
July 3, 1778, and the long-disputed land-claims of Con- 
necticut and Pennsylvania. Finally, and most enduring of 
all, he coined the phrase most current to-day on the lips of 
thousands of Americans — "to have an ax to grind". 

Charles, the youngest of four children, was born in Nor- 
wich (now Norwich Old Town, two miles from the river 
settlement), Connecticut, on the first day of February, 1780. 

The Connecticut Miners were descendants of Thomas 
Minor, or Mynor, a native of Chew Magna, Somerset, 
England, born April 23, 1608, the first of the family to 
emigrate to the new world. According to a quaint "Her- 
auldicall Essay upon the Surname of Miner," a copy of 
which (now in the Historical Room, Hartford, Connecti- 
cut) was procured about 1683 by Thomas Minor from his 



8 



1 H VRLES M INKK. 



cousin William, of Bristol. England; "Edward the third 
going to make warre against the French took a progresse 
through Somersett, and coming to Mendippi Colles mine- 
rarii, Mendippe Hills in Somersett where lived one Henry 
.Miner, his name being taken rather a denominatione loci ei 
ab officio, who with all carefullness and Loyaltie having 
convened his Domesticall and Meniall servants armed with 
Battle-axes profered himself and them to his Master's ser- 
vice making up a compleat hundred. Wherefore he had 
his Coat armoriall." In the course of this genealog\ 
the family Miner, it is interestingly said of a Fifteenth 
century William, that he "lived to revenge the death of the 
two young Princes murdered in the Tower of London, 
upon their inhumane unckle Richard the 3rd. It was said 
of this William Miner that he was Flos Militia, the Flower 
of chivilarie." 

The writer of the "Essay", which abounds in the punning 
intricacies and polyglot excursuses common to the literature 
of the seventeenth century, says at the end: "I shall be 
very much beholden to the Learned reader who if he can 
give more satisfaction in this essay would for the honour 
of Antiquitie (who now lyes in prof undo Democrat is 
Put co) mend the Errata Chronologicall and see if he can 
derive the surname from a longer time ; it being supposed 
that Henry Miner's name before the King's progresse in 
Somersett was Bullman, but how certain however 1 know 
not ; but leave it to some other whose experience and learn- 
ing exceeds mine." 

Thomas Minor came to Charlestown. Mass.. in 1629: 
lived at Hingham from 1636 to 1645; removed to New 
London, Conn., in that year, with the second Governor John 
Winthrop's colony of Massachusetts Puritans: and was 
Magistrate, member of the General Court, and trusted by 
his fellows in many ways. A final move, in 1652, was to 
1'awcatuck. now Stonington, in the same State, where he 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 9 

built a house at Wicketaquoc Cove ; took part in the organ- 
ization of the town ; twice acted as a commissioner to treat 
with neighboring Indians ; and served as lieutenant in the 
militia. The miscellaneous character of his usefulness may 
be illustrated by an entry in his diary for April 24, 1669 — 
in the usual affluent orthography of manuscripts of the time : 
"I was by the Towne & this yeare chosen to be a select man 
the Townes Treasurer the Townes Recorder The brander 
of horses by the Generale Courte Recorded the head officer 
of the Traine band by the same Court one of the ffouer that 
have Charge of the milishcia of the whole Countie and Chos- 
sen and sworne Commissioner and one to assist in keeping 
the Countie Courte." Before his death he had selected from 
his own fields a granite stone for his grave, in the burial- 
ground near his home ; and the horizontal bowlder, with its 
inscription legibly recut, tells the visitor that "Here lyeth 
the body of Lieutenant Thomas Minor, aged 83 years. De- 
parted 1690." Near by, a monument commemorates, at 
greater length, the services of Thomas Minor and three of 
his associates in the first days of the town. 

Thomas Minor's son Clement was the father of Clement, 
whose son Hugh was the father of Seth, who was born in 
New London in 1742, removed to Norwich; was a carpen- 
ter by trade; was for some years keeper of the jail; and 
served as orderly to Jedediah Huntington at Dorchester 
Heights, when the colonials were besieging the British in 
Boston. He lived to see his sons Charles and Asher well 
established in Pennsylvania, and died at Asher's home in 
Doylestown, in that State, in 1822. 

Charles Miner, in the fragments that are left of his 
Autobiography, which he called "Foot-prints of Charles 
Miner on the Sands of Time," says : 

"According to the family records I was born on the first 
day of February 1780, in the City of Norwich, Connecticut, 
of course in the midst of the Revolutionarv War. Too 



10 CHARLES MINER, 

young to recollect the events of that great struggle ; but its 
conclusion, the parade, the musick, the thundering of can- 
non on the declaration of Peace, I well remember." Any- 
thing he may have said in the Autobiography of his educa- 
tion is lost, but in a letter of date July 17, 1859, in answer 
to an invitation to be present or to send a letter at the two 
hundredth anniversary of the settlement of Norwich, he 
wrote that he was too old to come, and then went on to give 
a series of pictures hung in his gallery of memories : He 
says, "Affection for Norwich is twined with every fibre of 
my heart. Having emigrated to Pennsylvania while yet a 
boy, my time of observation is limited, and my scene of 
observation, to little more than the old Town or round the 
Square, fitted, rather, to amuse the grand-children, than 
impart instruction or pleasure to the present genera- 
tion." * * * 

[Perhaps one pretty, characteristic story which has 
amused the grand-children may be inserted here : Return- 
ing to Norwich after forty years he said he knew the old 
house on the square was no longer standing, but he would 
just walk out and see if the brown thrashers' nest was still 
there!] " * * * But to the school. The old Brick School 
House [Norwich-old-town, still in use] at the bottom of the 
lane, below the spacious new jail, knew no recess. * * * 
Newcome Kinne awakened a high degree of emulation, 
especially in writing, a sampler was pasted up before six or 
seven scholars, near the ceiling, on fine paper, on a double 
arch sustained by Corinthian columns. * * * Within each 
half arch, near the upper part, in fine hand, a poetical quo- 
taion, as suggested by fancy, probably from 'Hannah 
Moore's Search after Happiness,' then highly popular. 
Beneath, in larger hand, successive lines in beautiful pen- 
manship, filling the whole. The Piece painted in water 
colors — The pride of mothers — master and scholars. * * * 
The obedience fair. Teachers capable and attentive. Dis- 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. II 

cipline preserved without undue severity. Pleasant were 
our school hours." 

This, with some time at the "Lathrop School on the Plain" 
seems to have been the extent of his "schooling"; but life 
is always a school and he was always a scholar. After 
leaving this school he worked for some time at the printers 
trade in the office of the Connecticut Gazette and Commer- 
cial Intelligencer at New London. 

"After going into the office of Messrs. Hubbard and 
Bushnell for eight or ten months, I too, at the tender age 
of thirteen was sent willingly as an apprentice in the same 
office [with his brother Asher who was apprenticed to a 
Col. Green.] I remained with them a year, when my feeble 
health gave way, and Col. Green, my excellent and beloved 
master, took me home. * * * The moment health suffi- 
cient returned I repaired again to New London to attend 
the Bookstore, and learn book-binding, with Thomas Green, 
a Brother of Samuel. Soul-stirring incidents began to arise. 
Two French Frigates * * * came into the harbour for 
loads of timber. The officers purchased books and paper 
at our store. At night the sailors of both vessels all with 
red caps, to the number of some hundreds, would come on 
shore, accompanied by flags and musick. Parties from the 
town with the American flag would join them, and with the 
whole march from street to street singing the Marsellaise 
Hymn * * * making vows for Liberty or Death — denounc- 
ing the Tyranny of Great Britain, whose vessels were then 
giving no little interruption to our commerce. The people 
were wild with enthusiasm. * * * I may as well tell the 
anecdote here. Having learned, however imperfectly, the 
tune of the Marsellaise Hymn, it never was forgotten. 
Near forty years afterwards Dr. [Thomas] M[iner] told 
me at Wilkes-Barre he was going to visit a patient, who 
had been a member of the National Convention ; having 
voted for the Death of Louis, he had become an exile. I 



12 CHARLES MIXKK, 

went with him. Scarcely raising his head from the pillow- 
he feebly replied to the enquiry of the Physician ; and his 
pale cheeks told of extreme debility rather than acute 
disease. Speaking cheerily I told him he should have 
pleasant companions, and be out in the open air, see the 
bright sun, hear the birds sing and sing himself. He shook 
his head. Telling him I thought there were tunes that 
would arouse and do him good (I confess it was not very 
good manners) * * * I struck up, as well as I could. 
'Ye sons of France, awake to glory 
See what myriads bid you rise !' 

What a metamorphosis ! Rousing instantly, he sat up, 
his eye flashing fire, he drew on his cap, and taking up the 
note, made the room ring again. 1 hardly expected ever to 
hear that electrifying hymn sung by one of the original ac- 
tors in the scenes that gave it rise. * * *" * 

"Many persons from Norwich emigrating and preparing 
to emigrate to the Susquehanna, my father thought it best 
for me to go out and look after his lands, to settle — to sell 
— to do what should seem most judicious: all this while 
Brother Asher, regularly bound to a seven or eight year 
apprenticeship to Master Green, was laboriously, but cheer- 
fully, pursuing his course, making himself truly a man of 
business, not only acquiring his profession, but what is quite 
as necessary to success in life and only to be attained by 
long continued discipline — steadiness — the habit of appli- 
cation, method * * *. 

"Preparatory to my Susquehanna journey it was thought 
proper that I should be taught surveying. To this end I 
was sent to Lebanon [Conn.], and placed in the family and 
under the tuition of Kbenezer Bushnell of whom I have 

*Jean Francois Dupuy, a native of Bordeaux, France, who emi- 
grated from there to the Island of San Domingo, where he became 
a wealthy planter ; during the uprise of the Blacks on that island he 
.■scaped to Philadelphia, stripped nf his fortune, and came to W ilkes 
Barre about the year 1796 and lived in a house on the corner of 
Northampton and Franklin streets, where he died in the year 1836. 



A PENNSYLVANIA 1'IONEEK. 13 

spoken as printer of a Paper * * * at Norwich * * *. It 
was the winter of 1798-9 and we were getting things in 
readiness to depart for Susquehanna * * * and on the 8th 
of February 1790, — I being 19 years old the first day of 
that month — we put our horse to the sled, bade farewell, 
and set our faces westward ho ! 

"I have frequently quoted some beautiful lines of a 
Spanish Poet on leaving home; sweet from the flowing 
harmony of the numbers ; 'tender and true' for the senti- 
ment. 

'Hushed be the winds, be still the waters motion ! 
Sleep — sleep — my bark in silence on the main, 
So when to-morrow's light shall gild the ocean, 

Mine eyes once more shall view the coast of Spain : 
Vain is each wish, my last petition scorning 

Fresh blows the gale, and high the billows swell : 
Far shall we be before the break of morning, 
O then, forever, Native Spain, farewell." 

The lands to w T hich the youth so cheerfully set out were 
on the Wyalusing in what was then called Usher, in Luzerne 
county, but is now Jessup township, Susquehanna county, 
near Montrose. The journey thither — "strange to say 
without being stopped for traveling on the Sabbath" — was 
marked by as many hardships as were met by far-western 
settlers fifty years after; and the task of settlement was a 
rough struggle with virgin forests, wild animals, and scanty 
facilities. "On the 12th of February, 1799," he wrote, "in 
company with Captain Peleg Tracy, his brother Leonard, 
and Miss Lydia Chapman in one sleigh ; Mr. John Chase, 
of Newburyport, and myself in another ; J set out from 
Norwich, Ct, and arrived at Hopbottom, [Luzerne county, 
Pa.,] the 28th. The snow left us the first night, when we 
were only twelve miles on our way and we were 
obliged to place our sleighs on trundle-wheels." Miss 
Chapman's cheering helpfulness impressed him — "our 
cheerful, undaunted female friend ; through the patience- 



14 I HAKLES MINER, 

trying journey of sixteen days never a tear, a murmur, or 
a sigh." He found himself "one of a perfect live stream 
of emigrants bound for different positions on the Susque- 
hanna waters. At night, spreading the beds and blankets 
on the floor in front of a huge fire, a circle of twenty or 
thirty men, women, and children, boys, girls, and dogs, 
would lie down in the confidence of company and the se- 
curity of innocence." 

Taking up two "lots" at first he cleared four acres and 
sowed them with wheat, which he harvested in the fall ; 
but while it was in stack it was destroyed by bears. The 
place was afterward known as Miner 1 1 ill. On the other 
lot he built a bark cabin, and commenced chopping ; but, 
being unaccustomed to the business, made slow progress. 
He soon cut his foot, and was taken to a Mr. Whipple's, 
where he was cared for during several weeks. "When he 
got well, his taste for farming subsided," says a son of Mr. 
Whipple, "and he began to think he had mistook his call- 
ing." 

He never regretted, however, his experiences in what he 
used to call "Nature's Beech-wood Academy," when, as the 
Autobiography records, he started in the thick woods, with 
one eight-penny bill in his pocket, to become the artificer 
of his own fortunes. "It is probable that a large portion 
of the young men from New England who went out to 
settle in the then west and who are now [1844] emigrating 
to the far west beyond the Mississippi, should they re- 
late their adventures, would present kindred histories of 
buoyancy of spirit amid privations — the surmounting of 
difficulties and at the same time the hardly-thought-of 
evils of an empty purse." Among his privations he never 
counted the fact that the camp-provisions were "chiefly 
Indian meal stewed in maple sap ;" for he was a compa- 
triot of Joel Barlow. 

As for the "maple sap" part of his meal, he certainly 
had earned it, for sugar-making was one of the chief works 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 15 

of the young wood-cutter and farmer. Having "gone 
shares" with a certain Joe Sprague, who lived in solitude, 
with twelve or fourteen miles of wilderness separating him 
from the nearest humanity, young Miner, according to his 
own narrative, "took a horse load of [sugar] down the Tuiik- 
hannock, peddled it out, a pound of sugar for a pound of 
pork, seven and a half pounds for a bushel of wheat, five 
pounds for a bushel of corn ; saw the Susquehanna ; got a 
grist ground ; returned, and with Mr. Chase made knapsacks 
of coarse shirts ; filled them with provisions, and, each tak- 
ing an ax on his shoulder, took the bridle path by Mr. 
Parke's, and thence, fifteen miles more or less, arrived at 
the forks of the Wyalusing. I do not think a line drawn 
due south from Binghamton to Tunkhannock, near forty 
miles, would have cut a laid out road, or come in sight of 
a house or cabin on an earlier date than the preceding sum- 
mer." 

The snow was his book, the wolf and wild pigeon his 
companions, and the stars his philosophers and friends : 

"From Joe Sprague, I remember distinctly, I learned 
something besides sugar-making ; he formed for me a map 
of the country, on the snow, including the lakes, the St. 
Lawrence, and the Mississippi, showing me what part was 
in our territory and what belonged to Great Britain and 
Spain ; and he used to tell me that I swore never to cease 
my efforts until those rivers and lakes should be made the 
boundary of the United States. Half is accomplished : let 
the other be. * * * 

"As it was impossible to sit in the hut, after everything 
was in order I would wrap myself in my blanket and go out 
and sit on the rocks, rendered bare and warm by the con- 
stant fires, and look at the stars, and listen, not unfre- 
quently, to the distant howl of the wolf or the cry of the 
catamount. Where my thoughts wandered you may easily 
guess; brought up with great tenderness, the contrast was 
sufficiently obvious to be felt as well as seen ; yet I do not 



l6 < 11AKL1-:S MINER, 

remember, even for a moment, of indulging either sorrow 
or despondence. A lively hope, a tirm resolution to do 
something and be somebody, a just ambition, inspired me, 
and added hope to gild the future with rays of sunshine." 
"The snow was now departing, and the wild pigeons 
came, not in flocks — not in floods, but in a perfect deluge : 
the whole heavens were dark with them ; the cloud on 
wing continuing to pass for an hour or more, and cloud 
succeeding cloud. There were not millions but myriads, 
confirming the account of Audubon of the countless multi- 
tudes of these birds that formerly visited Kentucky. Towns 
were built by them for five or six miles in length along the 
Meshoppen — every branch and bough of every tree holding 
a rude nest."* His grandson. Isaac M. Thomas, and Mr. 

i HE P VSSINC OF A RA( 

[From the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 1014.] 

The death of a single bird in a public zoo is usually of but passing 
importance, but there will be historic interest in the death of Martha, 
the veteran passenger pigeon in the zoo at Cincinnati. Martha is 
twenty-nine years of age and is claimed to be the last of her race 
in the United States. With her death that class of wild pigeon will 
become extinct. 

Within the memory of the presenl generation there were mil- 
lions of these wild birds flying at will through the country from the 
Gulf to the Lakes. Through Ohio and Indiana there were vast flocks 
of them, their numbers being countless. Ravenous, after one of 
their flights, they played havoc with many crops, and hunters em- 
ployed nets, firearms and other devices to slaughter or frighten 
them away. 

As their numbers became reduced they were hunted with great 
zeal and supplied material for most appetizing pot pies. They trav- 
eled in great flocks, were able to cover great distances in a flight 
and because of their migratory habits were given their name. In 
size and color they were much like the domestic pigeon seen in most 
villages and cities. On the wing they could distance the domestic 
pigeon. 

Because of their numbers, their slaughter was ruthless, and thc\ 
rapidly decreased in numbers. Gradually the flocks became fewer 
and of less numbers, and finally they ceased to travel. When they 
became scarce a few were secured for the zoo at Cincinnati. Grad- 
ually they have died, and the veteran bird, now weakened and near 
death, is claimed to he the sole survivor known of the millions - 
only a few years ago. 

In the country where the numbers were the greatest the final 
extinction of the race will he seen. The rare event of the extinction 
of a race will take place at the Cincinnati zoo. 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. \"J 

W. H. Sturdevant, both can remember when these pigeons 
still came in clouds, and is it not pathetic that, through 
man's cruelty it is doubtful if even one of them is living 
to-day? Similarly some years later, 1804 or 1805, he de- 
scribes the shad coming up the Susquehanna to Wilkes - 
Barre : "They came in myriads, and attained, at that dis- 
tance from the ocean a fatness and flavor unknown in the 
lower part of the river. Every family put up a barrel or 
two, thev were cleaned and cured for domestic use 
[and] a luxury once a day the whole year round * * *. 
Let us take our boats, skiffs and canoes, row and paddle 
up the River and across above the sand-bar, to the landing 
on Col. Dorrance's farm a little below and opposite Mill 
Creek. Dorrance himself will be there, and Pettibone, and 
Shoemaker if he be not enaged alone. * * * Mr. Shoe- 
maker, the Lawyer, the Blacksmith, the Printer forgot 
everything except to hold the head line close to the bottom." 
Having divided their spoil they loaded their boats and "re- 
turn to Wilkes-Barre and moor them, with their treasure, 
feeling that without watching they will be safe. * * * Old 
Mr. Hess * * * used to say, after the canal was made, 
the dam erected in the River and the shad stopped — It was 
all folly and wickedness * * * for God made the Rivers, 
and broke down the mountains so that the shad might go 
up, and boats * * * go down free ; and man impiously 
thinking himself wiser had undertaken to mend God's work, 
but had marred it." Returning to his clearing : 

"It was interesting to observe that wherever the fire ran 
out of the fallow, destroying the timber sometimes, though 
rarely, the denseness and dampness of the forest prevent- 
ing its extending far, the next season myriads of rasp- 
berries would spring up, thick as it was possible to grow, 
and ripen as if the earth had been one mass of raspberry 
seed. * * * The remark was universal that wherever a 
windfall had occurred * * * the new timber that sprung 
up was never like that which preceded it. * : Where 



l8 ( IIAKLES MINER, 

.Mr. Hyde cleared a field of white pine of very large growth, 
the soil was found filled with yellow pine-knots, where not a 
yellow pine was then known. It seemed abundantly evident 
that it was a law of nature to supply successive crops of 
timber, differing in kind. The extent, too, to which the 
earth was literally saturated and crammed with seeds of 
various trees and plants seemed marvelous. It could not 
have been that the}' had lain dormant for ages. Where a 
well was dug, the earth brought up, from no matter what 
depth, almost immediately sent up a thick covering of white 
clover." 

The necessity of expecting and enduring hardship, in his 
later opinion "perhaps had a good effect in establishing a 
constitution thought to be delicate and inclined to consump- 
tion." Like Bryant and Emerson, an apparently fragile 
youth lived to a good old age and in his case certainly, there 
was an anticipation of the open-air sanitarium advocated 
by Oliver Wendell Holmes as far back as 1844. When by 
day one carries flour, meal, pork, salt, chocolate, a brass 
kettle, an axe, and a gun, and by night sleeps on pine 
boughs, neurasthenia and tuberculosis "depart, excede 
evade, are off, erump." "Was it," he asked in a memoran- 
dum written long after, "a time of suffering? Xo, no! of 
pleasurable excitement ; of hope, health, and mutual kind- 
ness. Novelty gilded the scene. There was just enough 
of danger, toil, and privation to give life a relish." 

His favorite lot, Number 39, was in a region surveyed 
under both Pennsylvania warrants and Connecticut land 
titles, and was under settlement, as rapidly as possible, by 
claimants representing both States. "No road," says the 
Autobiography, "had been laid out east or south within fif- 
teen miles of me, nor nearer than ten miles on the west ; 
and the preceding year, 1798. not an inhabitant existed 
within a circle of ten miles, my cabin being the centre; so 
that I may claim to have been one of the first settlers in 
Susquehanna County." 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 19 

To the boy it seemed a veritable earthly paradise : "In 
the beech, maple, ash, bass-wood, and wild-cherry lands the 
earth was free from every hurtful reptile or noxious thing. 
From having been covered annually for centuries with the 
fallen leaves the ground was soft and elastic to the tread ; 
springs were abundant, the waters gushing sweetly from the 
hills. Everything wore the air of newness and virgin fresh- 
ness as it came from the hands of the Creator. Man, for 
good or evil, had as yet scarcely scanned it, and it lay out- 
spread before us in all its original purity and beauty. It 
seemed as if it had been a retiring grove for the repose of 
Deity, an appurtenance to Paradise, containing himself in 
its shade, beneath the lofty trees of his own creation." 

In the summer of 1799 he visited as much of his land as 
possible, made some sales, and became acquainted with 
nearly every inhabitant within ten miles of his cabin. The 
rough life was diversified by an occasional debate with the 
supporters of the Pennsylvania claims, one of whom 
averred that "he was never so posed in his life ; a young 
fellow there, with tow trousers and bare feet, had every 
fact and date at his fingers' ends, and gave me more trouble 
in the contest than I ever met in my life." More romantic 
diversions were such as the escorting of a young woman 
"over thirteen miles through the wilderness without a horse, 
she riding the only one we had ; I, like a page, coursing my 
way on foot by her side." 

Returning home to Connecticut for a little time in the 
autumn, his companion was an Enoch Reynolds, who, in 
the course of "a new path, near twenty miles without a 
house," enlivened the distance "with tales from Shakes- 
peare, plays with which he was familiar, and I had never 
seen. Old Lear and his heartless daughters, who had 

'tied 
Sharp-tooth'd unkindness like a vulture, here,' 

the bloodv Richard, the revengeful Othello: above all. the 



20 CIIAKLHS MIXER, 

madcap Petruchio, taming his rampant bride, pleased me 
much; and I said to myself, 'I'll have that book.' " 

The next year his brother Asher "who nearly alwa\ s had 
money to lend," to whom Charles, without a penny in his 
pocket, had cheerfully written : "Come out. and I will set 
you up," went to Wilkes-Barre, some eighty miles from 
the lot 39 settlement ; and there, and elsewhere in Pennsyl- 
vania, made his home for the rest of his life, marrying 
Mary, daughter of Thomas Wright, long and widely known 
as a daring real-estate operator, whose grand-daughter, 
Letitia Wright was to be Charles' wife a few years later. 

When, a lad in the north of Ireland, Thomas Wright con- 
sulted his schoolmaster as to emigrating to America, he re- 
ceived the reply : "Yes, go, Thomas, you may eat white 
bread in your old age." Accordingly he came over and be- 
came a school-teacher in Dyertown, Pennsylvania, married 
a Miss Dyer, manufactured iron in New Jersey, "and in 
1790, having part in a contract to clean out obstructions in 
the upper part of the Lehi, he removed to Wilkes- 
Barre, opened an extensive apartment of goods, purchased 
farm after farm, took up from the land office large bodies 
of land — indeed became as bold a speculator as those hard 
speculating times produced. * * * Pie would, as he rode 
his rounds, meet a neighbor, and purchase his farm without 
alighting from his horse. In this dashing mode of doing 
business, though often successful, he sometimes got sadly 
left, fin this way, too, he became a Connecticut claimant Dy 
purchase, as shown in the History of Wyoming, Page 440.] 
Passing through the swamp * * * between Wilkes-Barre 
and Lehi he met a Jerseyman coming in with a load 
of hollow ware of iron, some pots, but chiefly. Tea- 
kettles — without examining an article, he purchased the 
whole and sent in an order for payment. When he re- 
turned, behold the kettles had no hollow in the spout and 
were worthless! No one laughed more heartily, or told the 
tale more merrily than Mr. Wright. * * * He was now 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 21 

commissioner of the County, proprietor of the newspaper 
establishment, had a store in town and one at his Iron- 
works at Bloomsbury." 

In 1795 ne Dm ^ tne nu ^> which, later bought by his son- 
in-law, Asher, has come by inheritance to his great-grand- 
son, Colonel Asher Miner and his brother. As the enthus- 
iasm of land-speculation grew upon him his free-hearh- 1 
way of doing business led, as might be easily foreseen, to 
his being later unable to pay for land he desired, or even 
to pay the taxes on what he already had, so that eventually 
he was obliged to sell land. One farm at the junction of the 
Lackawanna with the Susquehanna, at Pittston, went not 
for the usual "song" but for a corn-barn full of brooms, 
which, says family tradition, voiced by his great-grand- 
daughter, Mrs. Ellen Miner Thomas, the rats ate, the land 
being called "the broom farm," because of this fact. And so 
"Old Tommy Wright," as he is familiarily known in her 
family, having eaten his "white bread," became again a poor 
man, or would have done so but for his son-in-law, Asher s 
business prudence. Generous to a fault, as many of this type 
are, it was his "pleasure to call in a poor acquaintance, or 
even stranger passing by : — 'Come in, John, it is past noon — 
I know you must be hungry ; and we have a slice of bread 
and bacon waiting in the cupboard for you.' " 

Of his death the Autobiography gives an interesting ac- 
count : "But we must attend the closing scene. Aged 76 or 
7 he felt the near approach of death — Asher wrote his will 
and was made sole executor. [A very old copy apparent Iv 
in Asher's writing, is owned by a descendant, Mrs. M. C. 
Thornhill, Atlantic City, N. J. In this will he gives to 
Charles Miner "as a matter of my attachment and esteem 
$100: To his wife Letitia $50. when she shall 'come to 
age," and to their children Ann and Sarah each one good 
cow and six sheep.] Having disposed of everything judi- 
ciously to suit him he bade Bob his black servant, 
to brush up the carriage, and have it brought under his 



22 ' HABLES MINER, 

window, he being raised up to see that it was fit to go to 

his funeral. The well-brushed harness was brought into 

bi^ room tor the like purpose. He sent for his best 

emed friends Judge Fell and lawyer Bowman to come 

and superintend the burial, and departed, not as if it were a 

matter of fear, terror or regret — but as retiring from a 

lie where he bad performed his part, 'enjoying the goods 

the gods provided' or to rest after a long journey, with the 

-t perfect self -collection and placid composure." 

Asher, like Charles, learned the printers trade in Xor- 
wich, and bought of his father-in-law the Wilkes-Barre 
:ette founded in [797, which, under the later name of the 
Lucerne County Federalist, and the Lucerne Federalist, was 
t<> become a political and local power in the hands of the 
two brotber^. For this enterprise a printing-press of 
Asher's bad been transported by Charles in a sleigh on his 
return from Norwich, and deposited in Wilkes-Barre, 
(barks repairing once more to Lot 39, to cut and clear as 
many acres as possible for incoming settlers. Indeed, in 
one instance he went so far as to set out an apple-orchard, 
from which, some forty years afterward, the then owner 
s <-'"t him silent fruit. "So," he felicitated him- 

self, "you will see I remembered, before it was written, the 
advice of Sir Walter Scott 'to be sticking in a tree when 
'.on had leisure, for it would grow while you slept.' " This 
farm i- now, [915, owned by Dr. Norris, of Philadelphia; 
the orchard h ntly had to be cut down, having become 

affected with the San Jose scale. 

Thus, in the pioneer's union of incessant activity and 
mental serenity, the time wei t on. — "in active exertion, sur- 
veying a little, clearing patches of land on different lots, and 
selling, chiefly on credit; but receiving enough to render 
me. in my simple mode of living, independent ; paying, when 
I boarded abroad from my proper home at my bark cabin, 
a dollar a week." Bread, when be "kept himself," was 
•d from pounded green corn, mixed with stewed pump- 
kin : while venison and occasionally a voung bear provided 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 23 

the luxuries. The Autobiography tells the usual story of 
the primitive honesty of isolated humanity : "The two 
years 1 was in the beech-woods I never knew or heard of a 
door being fastened, or an article of property being lost, 
although things were frequently left exposed in the woods. 
Our blankets, tools, beds, and cooking-kettle, — our plates 
and bowls were made of bass-wood, — were left for weeks 
at the cabin, without a thought of fear." 

Meanwhile his spare time was devoted to the militia, in 
which he did good work (ranking as corporal), having had 
some previous training at Norwich. Later, in Wilkes- 
Barre, he was first lieutenant of the "Wyoming Blues." To 
the end of his days he believed in the militia as an almost 
necessary foundation of good government; and doubted 
whether the Revolution itself would have succeeded, or 
even been attempted, without it. But, living in the Quaker 
State, he declared it to be a sacred duty to recognize the 
scruples of those who objected to bearing arms. 

Two years were spent in what he called "my beautiful 
Usher," in constant health and happiness, and with a valu- 
able accumulation of experience, but with meagre financial 
results, which he grimly summarized as follows : "Cash, 
$8.00; notes, $203.00, for which I never received a cent, 
the purchasers having lost their land ; due from Thomas 
Wright, $55.00 for a horse; due from Asher, $10.50; total, 
$2/6.50." 

In the first year of the new century, "being of age," says 
the Autobiography, "I became a citizen of Pennsylvania. 
My purpose now was to associate myself with the press, if 
possible ;" but after settling the poor finances of clearings, 
the need of earning his living, turned him to school-teaching 
for six months, in Wilkes-Barre, where he boarded with 
his brother Asher. 

In retrospect he writes: "It would be superfluous to say 
that Wilkes-Barre has wonderfully changed since it first 
met my view. The ferry was kept opposite Northampton 



_'4 I HAKLF.S MINER, 

street, in front of Mr. Butler's. Starting from the ferry, 
ing up that street (towards Faston) to Main Street, 
there was on the left hand only one house, that of Mr. 
Dupuy. Turning up Main Street to the Public Square, 
there \va-. on the left, only one house, the tavern, now occu- 
pied as such. Turning northwesterly along the Public 
Square, to Market Street, and thence down to where the 
bridge now stands, there was not a house on the left. 
.Wither the meeting-house nor the court-house [afterwards 
ted in the Public Square] was then built. Franklin 
Street, on which are the Episcopal and Presbyterian 
churches, was not then laid out. From the Public Square to 
the river, on the right side of the way. was the building now 
[1844] Cahoon's store, then occupied by Joseph Vmght, 
Esq. The house recently occupied by Col. Lamb, at the 
corner, my brother had obtained of his father-in-law, part 
gift and part as a purchase, where he resided and had 
the printing-office. A small one-story house stood on the 
lot now occupied by the large hotel of Col. Dennis of which 
I -ball -peak presently; and at the corner opposite Mr. 
Hollenback's large brick building was a tavern owned by 
rhomas Wright and kept by Mr. Hurlbut, not long since 
sheriff. I'be town pint wa- yet covered with pine 

and oak bushes." Mr. Miner soon afterward rented the 
one-story house and kit mentioned above, — seventy feet 
front and a hundred deep, for twenty dollars a year, with 
to purchase for $200. "It" it were now I 1844 1 without 
buildings it would bring nearly $100 a foot." * * * 

Reviewing the vast improvement in our beautiful 

rough, with -,, much pride and satisfaction. I could not 

help detaining you a momenl to show what it was since my 

remembrance Though nut of place one thing 1 will say 

here Not a building ought to be allowed to be erected, in 

the thickl) populated part of the town, that is not fire- 

' I be steep roof which cannot be walked on — 

I with pine shingles, which, in two summers become 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 2$ 

like tinder, to catch and kindle every spark of fire, ought to 
be repudiated — done away with, and roofs nearly level 
formed, covered with zinc, having trap doors, like the 
hatches of a ship, perfectly water tight, substituted in their 
stead. A neat railing round the roof would be ornamental, 
while for airing clothes, or affording a pleasant view, it 
would be useful and agreeable * * *. 

"But the portraiture and sketches illustrative of men and 
manners as they appeared in Wilkes-Barre forty years ago, 
are not yet half finished. Nearly a dozen of the elder per- 
sonages, Gen. Lord Butler, Judges Hollenback, Denison and 
Fell, Lawyer Bowman, Capt. S. Bowman, Sheriff Dorrance, 
Nathan Palmer, Prothonotary, and others, I have sketched 
elsewhere and may possibly append the brief but pretty 
accurate pictures, to these memoirs. Familiar to many of 
my readers they are now omitted or postponed to make way 
for a view of more youthful society. 

"The songs of the day, especially of the young ladies, 
return with their sweet cadences to the ear, and demand 
notice. 

"Miss Lydia Butler's song, 'Alloway House,' has been 
mentioned, Miss Nancy Butler's (afterward Mrs. Robin- 
son) favorite had this chorus: 

'See content, the humble gleaner, 
Takes the scattered ears that fall 
Nature all her children viewing 
Kindly bounteous, cares for all.' 

"Miss Stevens (afterward Mrs. Dana) sang to us: 
'At the close of the day when the hamlet is still 

And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove, 
When nought but the torrent is heard from the hill 

And nought but the nightingale sang in the grove !' 

"Miss Letitia Wright, 'Ye banks and braes of bonnie 
Doon' with an artless sweetness, extremely pleasing. Miss 
Mary Wright (Br. Asher's wife) : 



I HARLES MINER, 

- Cupid in the garden stray 'd 
And sported by a damask's shade 
A little bee unseen among 
The silver leaves his linger stung.' 
Winch beautiful Anacreontic, by the way is, in my opinion, 
a better translation than that, by Moore. 
'Cupid once upon a bed 
< >f roses laid his weary head 
Luckless urchin not to see 
Within the leaves a slumbering bee.' 
"But we have hardly leisure now for criticism. 
"Miss -Maria Hodgkinson (since Mrs. Overton) sang 
with unsurpassing {sic) sweetness 'The Vale of Avoca.' 
"There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet,' which 
11 double pleasure, for we applied the line to our 
own loved Wyoming. 

"Brother Asher never pretended to sing unless the chorus 

to 'Adams and Liberty' or 'Hail Columbia' on the 4th of 

July, and as for myself, with snatches of a line or two, of 

almost every song I had heard. 'Tom Bowling' was the only 

one I could sing, when there was no escape, and that I 

never gol through with correctly * * *." Then follows a 

cription of men of business, commissioners, lawyers 

■ping out to the river bank to play base ball, or trying to 

who could go straightest, blindfolded, from Anheuser's 

store to the broadside of the church: "Poor sinners that we 

were, not one in ten could reach the church. 

"It was not the fashion of the day and place for the 

young men to herd by themselves, drinking, smoking or 

bling. I never knew an instance among our young men 

ling int.. a tavern to ask for a small glass or a 

ie. The first thoughl of amusement for the evening 

brought with it the enquiry where -hall we meet the girls— 

,1 " 1,K ' tea at Mr. Carpenter's. Mr. Brown's. Mr. 

Lathrop's, Mr. Nevin's or Mr. Huntington's— If at neither 

us gather them together." 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 2"J 

Self-education of the best kind was meanwhile eagerly 
pursued, for Ebenezer Bowman, who had the best library 
in town, "opened it without reserve" to the young man, who 
"found it an ocean of sweets, an incomparable treasure, what 
my soul longed for, without knowing the object that would 
satisfy it. I read, I devoured; and thenceforward through 
life have been a hard student, appetite increasing with 
gratification." Macpherson's Ossian, then deemed a gen- 
uine epic, specially delighted him ; and as he trudged to his 
school-house, — on what was afterwards known as Hib- 
ler's hill, near the present Vulcan Iron Works, a mile and 
a quarter below the Public Square, — with his dinner in a 
basket and a translation of Homer's Iliad under his arm, 
he longed for noon with "an infinitely greater desire" for 
the tale of Troy divine than for the sandwiches and cheese. 
"I love Hector, and never read the line 'Troy charged the 
first and Hector first of Troy,' but my heart almost leaped 
from my bosom." More practical, though not more en- 
thusiastic, was a thorough reading of Blackstone's Com- 
mentaries, for which he paid six dollars and a half of his 
scanty money. In after times, "when brought in conflict 
with learned and ready opponents, the knowledge obtained 
from Blackstone was a signal success." 

The terms of tuition in his school, for pupils all the way 
from the ABC children to young men of his own age, were 
fifty cents a quarter per scholar — that is, for a term of 
twelve weeks. One of his pupils, it is said, was little Leti- 
tia Wright ; another like himself, was afterwards in Con- 
gress: Amasa Dana, of New York, "a gentleman of talent 
and virtue," but unfortunately "a Loco of the purest of 
Van Buren water." 

His heart, however, was ever in journalism ; and having 
proved himself, in his brother's office, a quick and accurate 
compositor and a paragraphist whose work was read and 
copied, he was admitted as partner in the concern, and on 
Monday, May 2, 1802, the Luzerne Federalist appeared 



• ll KSL.ES miner, 

with the names of "A. & C. Miner" as editors and propri- 
etor-. A manuscript note, not in the Autobiography, ex- 
plains the circumstances: "[Asher] requiring some assist- 
ance 1 gladly aided him through the winter, in the course of 
which my early acquired knowledge of type-setting came 
in excellent play, and I would compose my journeyman's 
days work, by pretty close application; and work the Press 
with my brother, pulling and beating [illegible] alternately, 
lint 1 was ambitious to become an editor, and write for the 
paper. At length, with some misgivings whether it would 
do. Asher admitted an article, the first you will observe. 
ever printed of my composition, and lo! before a week 
elapsed, it came back in a respectable daily print of Phila- 
delphia. This matter of approbation, so pleasing to my 
vanity, so grateful to my pride, removed every doubt, and 
henceforth my contributions were made welcome." 

A few fleeting admirations for other girls are recorded 
in the Autobiography; but he seems to have half fallen in 
love with his future wife when she was only three years 
older than Dante's Beatrice at the poet's first sight of her. 
I if hi- first meeting with Thomas Wright, after Asher's 
marriage to his only daughter, Charles says: "I of course 
was channel with him ;" and adds "This is a capital be- 
ginning for a Yankee boy. thought I ; isn't there another for 
me? I'm Mary was an only daughter, and she was a favor- 
child. But there was running about a pretty, merry. 
pouting-lipped granddaughter, bright, laughing and forward 
as a universal favorite and pet could be. aged not quite 
thirteen, of whom 1 may speak hereafter." 

\boul two and a half years later, on January l6, 1804, 
came the greatest external event in Charles Miner's life; 
his marriage to l.etitia Wright, the "merry * * * grand- 
daughter" of Thomas Wright. Many years later her 
daughter Ellen used to tell of the little girl-wife playing 
with her dolls, and hiding them behind the door if she heard 
any one coming, but forty-eight \ears of unvarying happi- 



r 
- 



> 

g 

»— ' 
Z 




n 



C/3 



X 

?3 




A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 20, 

ness followed, as is attested by every memory of their chil- 
dren and associates, and by his numerous letters, still care- 
fully preserved, — from which frequent citations will be 
made in that portion of this memoir devoted to his congres- 
sional career. 

The patience and courtesy of the young couple (Charles 
was twenty-three and Letitia fifteen) were certainly 
strained to the utmost, though they never gave way, by the 
fact that, within three or four months after their marriage, 
Mrs. Miner's father and mother came to live with them. 
Joseph Wright was himself only between thirty-five and 
forty years old, and, according to the hearty testimony of 
his son-in-law, "highly intelligent, and of manners wonder- 
fully pleasing," a good talker, reader, and singer, and an 
honest magistrate; but unfortunately addicted to liquor. 
The Autobiography, by what it says and does not say, suffi- 
ciently indicates the strain put on the young couple for 
many years; but endurance, by no means unfortified by real 
affection, triumphed. 

He speaks of "our very small and inconvenient abode — 
small you may suppose for two families, when I paid but 
twenty dollars a year rent. Letitia and I could not help it but 
took the matter as philosophically as possible. * * * Letitia 
was to me all that my heart and my judgment sought for; 
they were her father and mother ; and that decided the 
matter." And on Mr. Wright's death, more than twenty 
years later, his son-in-law wrote in real distress from Wash- 
ington " * * * Poor Father, and yet, all his good qualities 
— his fine literary tastes — his love for the children — his read- 
ings to Sarah — his attachment to me, all come over my 
heart." 

The only peccadillo time has preserved is a story of his 
early married life which he tells with pride: "But our 
society, rarely exceeded in virtue, was not without its 
shades of evil. Card playing had crept in among us * * * 
a set of jnvial fellows used to take a Tiff, that was the 



IIXER, 

I word, and 1, who just knew the yueen of Hearts from 
the Jack of Spades, took a hand." One night the fascination 

tronger than usual "and it was late breakfast time be- 
fore we sallied out. For myself, with compressed lip, and 
inure shame than my pride would be willing to avow, I 
inarched for home uncertain whether I should find Letitia 
in tears, or prepared to give me a lecture on my evil doings. 
'What did 1 care, was 1 not a man, independent, who had 
a riyht to call me to account? I'd let the world know — I 

master of my own actions' — and so stepped into the 
door. Lo! there were neither frown nor tears. A smile 
of cheerfulness and welcome (I won't answer for the smile 
in the heart ) bade me good morning. The table was set 
with mure than ordinary care — the cloth whiter — the coffee 
clear as amber, and not a word or allusion to \vl4ere I had 
been. : * * The discretion — the good sense — the tact on 
the part of my very young, but very good wife were ad- 
mirable; and after sleep and time had restored the proper 
tone, I resolved, no formal pledge, but made up my mind 
never so to offend again, and never have." 

"The year 1804 was especially memorable to me for four 
circumstances. Married, January 16th. In May brother 
Asher and 1 dissolved business connections, I purchasing 
the establishment and becoming sole proprietor of the 
Luzerne Federalist. On the 24th of October new and 
tenderesl sympathies were awakened by the birth of a 
daughter whom we named Anna Charlton, after my beloved 
Mother, and Nov. 3 the death of that Mother, of whom I 
have often spoken, and of whom it is impossible for me to 
k without emotions of deepest veneration and love. It 
is balm to my heart that 1 never purposely offended her; 
I caused her no sorrow, 1 awakened in her bosom no pain 
( I do not mean to exempt myself from the trifling forward- 

of a petted child, or that I somteimes lingered longer 
with my playmates than the allotted hour) unless by leav- 
ing her when duty demanded of me to seek my fortune 
from home, and leave her. She died of consumption aged 
60 years. 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 31 

"Asher [grandfather of Charles A. Miner] with his 
growing family (he having two children, and as I dandled 
them both on my knee, loved them then and love them 
still, I cannot refrain from saying, the oldest was Anna 
Maria, the amiable wife of Dr. Abraham Stout, the other 
Thomas Wright, named as you may suppose after his grand- 
father ; now, I need hardly add, Physician of Wilkes-Barre, 
whose skill and success give him a just fame which needs 
no compliment from my pen to enhance) Asher had wisely, 
and with that enterprise that distinguished him, cast about 
for some mode of extending his business. * * * His mind 
turned to Doylestown * * * [and] after visiting the 
place he resolved to try the experiment, removed, estab- 
lished the Correspondent * * * mounted his horse and 
rode with true Yankee perseverance, to every town and vil- 
lage soliciting subscriptions * * *. Business flowed in upon 
him * * * and placed Asher in a position of entire com- 
fort, with a fair prospect of independence. In parting with 
him allow me in justice to add; his business habits, his 
methods, his prudence, were of especial use to me, although 
I never attained to the perfection that distinguished him. 
* * * His judgment was sound, his morals pure, all his 
affections kindly, his habits and manners agreeable. Con- 
fidence and good will, the esteem of manhood, as the love 
of childhood, flowed uninterruptedly between us, and we 
separated with regret from motives solely prudential." 

The name of the Federalist was changed to Lucerne Fed- 
eralist and Susquehanna Intelligencer, and, with Charles 
as sole editor and proprietor, was published at two dollars 
a year, plus fifty cents for delivery by post-riders, pay- 
ment being largely in goods which were collected along the 
Susquehanna river for a hundred miles and brought home 
by boat, often by the proprietor himself. A little adver- 
tising and some collateral book and pamphlet printing eked 
out the revenues of the ofhee ; the first book issued being 
the poems of Samson Occom. the Indian taught by Eleazer 
Wheelock, whose preaching in England was so decisive a 



J2 MINER, 

factor in the collection of the funds used to establish 
Wheelock's Indian charity school, out of which grew Dart- 
mouth i ollege. 

That Mr. Miner was a kind employer, successful in win- 
ning affection in the printing office, is plain, for on one 
occasion he received a communication containing this 
unique tribute: "May God bless you and keep you, is the 
undying wish of your devil"! 

The Federalist was a stead) and useful promoter of the 
then declining fortunes of the political party which gave 
it its name, and which he loyally supported during the long 
period preceding the revival of Federal Whiggism. as the 
National Republican parts of John Quincy Adams 
t went\ -four years later. "The reader will bear in mind." 

- the Autobiography, "That the great political contest 
which eventuated in the overthrow of the Federal party and 
the election of Jefferson and Burr had just taken place; 
that party passions were holding Saturnalia throughout the 
union: that in Pennsylvania especially the elections of Go\- 
ernor McKean, the Democratic candidate, over J. Ross of 
Pittsburgh, had added bitterness to the conflict; and that 
in Luzerne the flames of party rancour raged with scorching 
vehemena 

" lb-- paper was freely opened to those who differed from 
us as well as to those with whom we accorded, ever with 
liberal impartiality. With the Federal colors flying at the 

sthead, our Democratic fellow-citizens, the Wilkes- 

rre Gazette bavin- ceased to be published, were always 

welcome to the use of our pages. I do not believe I ever. 

in my life, rejected an essay, senl me in good faith, by an 

opponent, and when a candidate myself, proceedings of 

•in--, hostile to my nomination were admitted without 

itation." 
gain, when first elected to the Legislature, he opened 

columns to his oponents to "taunt my faults with such 
full license as truth and malice have power to utter." 

The Federalist contained some local news and general 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 33 

matter: "The hind dispute was now at its height, and I 
wrote, besides numerous paragraphs, a course of essays 
under the signature of Leonidas, in behalf of the Connecti- 
cut settlers and their claims." Before the days of the regu- 
lar editorial, the "printer," who was identical with the edi- 
tor, in many journals adopted the Addisonian method of 
enlightening his readers on all sorts of topics — moral, re- 
ligious, and literary, as well as political. Foreign "intelli- 
gence," in the years when the whole world was shadowed by 
the malign Bonaparte, wading through slaughter to a 
throne, was not the less important because it was belated 
for months, and deviously transmitted. Once, at least, 
October 28, 1808, the Federalist indulged in one of the 
earliest "displays" I have found in any American news- 
paper, which I reproduce in scale : The "scare-heads" were 




and then, after saying that the report had come through a 
couple of sailing-vessels, the paper went on to chronicle the 
dire news that 

p . apaf te.' : had dec la - 

i .;d War against --A- 

merica.l td im- 

all AiiKTi- 



i\i \\ti) , V'-vl Co;-- 

i\\ Aw 

. i*fc ■ 



34 CHARLES MIXER, 

[ 1 805 ? I "As I was in the midst of politics, knee deep — 
p, sleeves rolled up for the work, my young po- 
litical r ay be pleased to know what was the aspect 
litical affairs at that period or 40 years ago. The 
view is curious and not uninteresting: — In 1799, and 1800, 
great revolution had taken place, which gave the Dem- 
rty the ascendency in Pennsylvania and in the 
National Government. The Federalists, the great current 
of their measures having been wise and essentially success- 
ful, conscious alike of the purity of their patriotism, their 
integrity of purpose and of their, at least, equal claim to 
talents, were astonished at the issue; and braced their 
nerves for a contest to regain the ascendency. How vain 
were their effort- history has recorded. It is not to be 
denied the Democrats understood the nature of man and the 
springs of human action, with a distinctness compared with 
which the Federalists were mere purblind novices. In 
courtship of the People the 'bowing popularly low' they beat 
length at every throw, and the masses rallied to 
their standard. 

"Major Russell with his able co-adjutors of the Boston 
< razette, New England Palladium, Worcester Spy, and 
other Massachusetts papers; Pickering, Fisher Ames, Har- 
•1 Gra) ( Mis, a prominent leader in the Bay State — The 
Connecticut Courant at Hartford, with the Dwights, Cris- 
wold and Tracy, Dana and other conspicuous leaders in 
Connecticut; Hamilton, the Van Rensselaers, the Evening 

it, with Coleman at its head — The Spectator with Noah 
Webster as its chief editor — the Balance with inimitable 
1 rosswell as its conductor, presented a Grecian phalanx in 
New York, [illegible] firm, and resolved. The Pennsyl- 
vanian C. 1'. Wayne, and afterwards Brownson and Chaun- 
cy, and their able correspondents, rendered the U. S. 
Gazette a spirited battery; Dennie with his Portfolio, part 
literary, and part political, with the aid of the laborious 

If and the prudent Paulson roused the City Federalist- 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 35 

to quarters, while William Hamilton, of Lancaster, the 
playful Billy Blackberry of epigram and song, rendered 
his Gazette effective. I hail also with singular pleasure the 
recollection of the 'Adams Sentinel,' the Franklin Reposi- 
tory, the Bedford Gazette, the Pittsburgh Gazette as co- 
laborers, with the more humble but not less zealous 'Luzerne 
Federalist' in the cause of resuscitating decaying Federal- 
ism. But one fnight as well have attempted to row up 
Niagara Falls. The argument and wit were of course 
fairly with us ; but as for the rest, [in] the biting satire, the 
scorching sarcasm, the withering [illegible] barbed, feath- 
ered and sent for deepest penetration, the opposition we 
thought were quite our match. At home all the Popular 
stream was against us, Jefferson's red breeches * * * his 
mellifluous accents and inimitably popular style took with 
the popular taste ; but the acquisition of Louisiana, the 
opening the whole extent of the Mississippi to commerce, 
* * * gave him and his administration claim to public 
consideration, which established his party effectually in 
power, and bore him on in triumph. * * * In 1803 of the 
eighteen Representatives in Congress from Pennsylvania 
there was not one Federalist. In the State Senate there 
was one, and in the House only 5." 

During this busy time he greatly valued the associations 
of the masonic lodge to which he always remained loyally 
attached, and of his admission to which he wrote : "But I 
was 'a man of full age and under the tongue of good re- 
port' and longed to have disclosed to me the secrets of a 
'free and accepted Mason' * * *. Judge Fell led me ('oh. 
how my poor heart panted') and John Paul Schott, Esq , as 
Master of the Lodge, brought me to Light."* Also he en- 
joyed the debating society, in which the clash of argument 
and wit formed a sort of post-graduate course of the 
"Beechwood Academy" : "I look back to our Debating 

*For a full account of his Masonic relations see "History of 
Lodge No. 61," by Oscar J. Harvey, Esq., Wilkes-Barre Pa 
which the first sketch ever published of Mr. Miner appears. 



\KLKS MINER, 

School with great pleasure, and as a source of improve- 
ment infinitely exceeding the value of the time and labor 
expended." 

The little office had occasionally been able to do some 
printing for Philadelphia patrons; and Mr. Miner made his 
first visit to "the great city." "Hartford and Newburg, 
Norwich and New London I had seen, but never so 
;t place as Philadelphia. Its order, its vastness, its regular- 
ity, were all enchantment to me" ; and so were Peak's 
Museum, Cooper as Richard III, Jefferson in "The Village 
Lawyer" — Peale's pictures of Revolutionary worthies 
"enchaining attention with emotions of pleasure almost ex- 
tending to pain." 

Some time later but of uncertain date, probably 1806, he 
visited Philadelphia again on his return from a trip to 
Washington. The Autobiography says: "A voyage down 
the [Susquehanna] river in a canoe extended into a journey 
to Washington City * * *. Thomas Wright, Esquire, 
owned the old forge place at Lackawanna where he had a 
bloomery making excellent iron." It was hoped the author- 
ities at Washington might consider establishing a foundry 
for arms and cannon, so in company with Arnold Colt, who 
was to share in the enterprise if successful, he started * * *. 
"We launched a canoe, put on board a small basket of pro- 
visions and armed each with a paddle and setting pole, we 
pushed into the river to pursue our journey. I cannot help 
saying that in reviewing this matter it seems to me strongly 
marked temerity and folly : * *. That we passed through 
Nanticoke and other falls and ripples without upsetting or 
accident seems almost a miracle. Six or eight miles below 
Sunbury we attached our canoe to a raft and were upset 
in 'the great Canawaga falls.' Deeply I drank of the angry 
stream * * * with the loss of our canoe and the gain of a 
good ducking we got safely through, having acquired some 
character for firmness." * * * On reaching Lancaster 'I 
had the pleasure for the first time to see the assembled 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 2)7 

wisdom of Pennsylvania in legislative session * * *. The 
scene was full of pleasure and romance. I will not say a 
secret thought did not steal into my mind that if I behaved 
well and exerted myself honorably, I might at some future 
day find my way there. Certainly the idea of an immediate, 
or even early enjoyment of what I esteemed so high an honor 
did not enter into my conception." * * * On arriving at 
Washington "and having an interview with Mr. Gallatin 
then at the head of the Treasury, I found little encourage- 
ment to hope that my speculations would succeed; the Gov- 
ernment, inclined to a spacific policy, being neither author- 
ized nor disposed to establish a cannon foundry or armory, 
especially so far in the interior. * * * I visited the Presi- 
dent's House, had a glimpse of, but no introduction, to 
President Jefferson, but we were very civilly shown the 
rooms, and as was the European fashion, the State bed, in 
a recess, very elegant, in which Mr. Jefferson did not sleep. 
My ambitions were not then so aroused as to imagine 
what happened twenty years afterward, that I should be 
one of a Committee of Congress * * * to visit the Presi 
dent's House, to inspect and report on the furniture, every 
room being thrown open to us * * *." Leaving Wash- 
ington after a week "all charm and romance to my yet 
youthful and inexperienced mind," he set out for Philadel- 
phia. "And here I first saw Matthew Carey, that most 
indefatigable of men and of Booksellers. Introducing my- 
self I told him that as publisher of the Luzerne Federalist 
I printed various blanks for sale and the thought had struck 
me that money could be made by the sale of school and other 
books, but cash I had none, and the question was. would 
he let me have one or two hundred dollars worth on credit. 
'You are a stranger, sir, is there any person with whom you 
are acquainted in the city you could refer me to?' — 'Not a 
soul' — 'Well, well,' relaxing into a smile and a pleasant one, 
'I'll venture to trust that face to the amount you specify.' 
The acquaintance then formed ripened not into intimacy or 



58 CHARLES MINER, 

friendship, but into confidence and hearty good will con- 
tinuing through life. Lame, from a wound received in the 
foot in a duel with Oswald, (if my information be correct) 
he limped a good deal, otherwise he was a handsome man 
with a fine, round, expressive face, full of animation — 
passionate — placable — just — generous — benevolent. Highly 
intelligent and enterprising, for many years Mr. Carey exer- 
d an extensive influence both on the politics and busi- 
ness of the city." 

Mr. Miner's first appearance in public life was as clerk 
of election, for which he received $1.50, the most money he 
had ever earned in a day. In 1806 he was chosen a mem- 
ber of the first borough council of Wilkes-Barre, "in com- 
pany with Judge Hollenback, Gen. Butler, and others of 
the old substantial gentlemen who took office to set matters 
agoing in the right direction. Being comparatively a poor 
boy among these wealthy veterans, I was proud enough to 
be pleased with the honor." The next year he was made 
one of the first Board of Trustees of the local Academy of 
which he was one of the incorporators ; but his conspicuou s 
public career began in the autmun of the same year, when, 
to his surprise, he was elected a member of the Pennsylvania 
House of Representatives from Luzerne county. Or, as 
the Autobiography puts it, "the year 1807 became very un- 
expectedly one of the most memorable of my life; as a 
chain of circumstances arose which led me to a position 
not in the distance unhoped for, but which even the throb- 
bine: impulses of my ambitious heart had not whispered was 
near at hand \ sharp quarrel with Judge Thomas Cooper 
placed me prominently in the lead of an exasperated, high 
spirited, and generous people." 

Letters passed between Mr. Miner and Judge Cooper, 
published in the Lucerne Federalist in May, 1807: 

" * * * T well remember when my friend Jesse Fell 
brought r. e Judge Cooper's letter, he looked as if he enter- 
t doubl whether I would publish it k l l ' l 



\ PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 39 

you print it, Charles?'— 'Certainly.'" Judge Cooper was 
dining with friends when the paper containing Mr. Miner's 
reply was handed to him : 

"As he read it with increasing eagerness he would ex- 
claim 'D it, D it, D it,' till he got to the end 

when bursting into a laugh he said, 'The Dog has talents 
for all.' " 

Thomas Cooper had, after due trial, and a plea of guilty 
on the part of the accused, sentenced a boy of fifteen to 
one year's imprisonment for horse-stealing. The same day 
two citizens of good repute, both of them friends and neigh- 
bors of Mr. Miner, told the judge that the boy had been 
otherwise objectionable, and that a longer sentence would 
do him good. Judge Cooper, accordingly, ordered him be- 
fore the court the next morning, and changed the sentence 
from one year to three; but learning that the crier had 
called a court of common pleas and not one of quarter 
sessions — to which the case belonged — caused a quarter ses- 
sions court to be opened, and sentenced the boy a third 
time. 

Such a procedure was of course opposed to law and com- 
mon decency, and. if made a precedent or a practice, intol- 
erable; which facts Mr. Miner very vigorously set forth 
in his newspaper. Judge Cooper retorted in a long and 
haughty letter, which left the real case exactly where it 
had been ; and gave Mr. Miner a capital chance, which he 
promptly accepted, to make a crushing rejoinder, of which 
the following sentences were the nub : 

"This mode of condemnation appears as new to me as it 
it unjust. If dough had stolen money, and there were 
witnesses in town to prove the fact, why was not the at- 
torney for the State notified, and directed to proceed 
legally against him? Or if you chose to dispense with the 
dull forms of law, would it not have been at least proper 
to have ordered the witnesses into court, together with the 
prisoner, and. in the face of the public have obliged them 



. HABLES MINER, 

on oath to declare what they knew against the prisoner? 
< >ur Constitution, formed, I believe, before your arrival in 
this country, declares that in all criminal prosecutions the 
accused hath a right to be heard by himself and his counsel ; 
to demand the nature and cause of the accusation against 
him ; and to meet the witnesses face to face." 

Yen effective use was also made of the Blackstone 
bought with the scant)' earnings of the young school- 
teacher, and now brought to bear against a judge: 

"He so good as to listen to what Judge Blackstone says of 
such evidence: 'In cases of felony at the common law. 
confessions of the prisoner made to persons not legally 
authorized to receive them are the weakest and most sus- 
picious of all testimony, ever liable to be obtained by artifice, 
false hopes, promises of favor, or menaces; seldom remem- 
bered accurately or reported with due precision, and being 
incapable in their nature of being disproved by other nega- 
tive evidence.' * * The same excellent author whom I 
e quoted says: 'The Judge shall be counsel for the 
<»ner: that is, he shall see that the proceedings again>t 
him are strictly legal ami regular." 

< 'f Judge Cooper he generously wrote, long after the 
echoes of the controversy had died away : 

"Judge Thomas Cooper was an educated adventurer, one 
of the many who found asylum along the banks of the Sus- 
quehanna river. It was a society of distinguished talents 
which gathered at the confluence of the north and west 
- early in this century. Born in London, educated 
beford, admitted to the bar, a natural philosopher, and 
a natural agitator, he followed his friend Dr. Joseph 
Priestly to bis retreat at Northumberland. On his way Mr. 
I looper took his seat in the French Assembly, along with Mr. 
Watt, as representative «>f the Manchester Philosophical 
Society. Judge Cooper and John M. Taylor were ap- 
pointed Commissioners to put in execution the Acts of 
Assembly of Pennsylvania, offering compensation to the 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 41 

Pennsylvania claimants and conferring Connecticut titles. 
To Judge Cooper is due the credit of that most righteous 
compromise. He removed to South Carolina, where his 
distinguished talents had called him to preside over Colum- 
bia College" [the University of South Carolina.) 

.Mr. Miner's Federalist blood was stirred by the fact 
that his opponent was a Democrat ; but in this instance the 
representatives of the two parties changed ground, for 
judge Cooper was exercising the very arbitrariness which 
had aroused the Democrats against the Alien and Sedition 
laws of the John Adams administration under which laws 
Cooper himself had been fined four hundred dollars and 
six months imprisonment, for libel against the president, 
in 1800. In a brilliant sketch of Judge Cooper, a little 
earlier in the Autobiography, it is said: "Prosecuted, con- 
victed, and imprisoned (as he deserved) his room was 
the resort of the political Elite of the Democratic party of 
the city, and his pen rendered the Aurora a splendid cor- 
ruscation of playful satire, or bitter invective. The song 
which made more Democrats than all the reasoning in or 
out of Congress is said to have been a production of his 
versatile genius when in confinement. 

'When morning's first blushes first illumine the east, 

I haste to my daily employment, 

I grub all the day while the well-born can feast, 

For they can afford the enjoyment. 

'Our rulers can feast on six dollars a day, 
The poor must be taxed this extortion to pay. 
And if I against them do anything say, 
In jail I must lie for sedition.' " etc. 

The result of this controversy with Judge Cooper was 
that without any personal effort Mr. Miner was elected in 
October, 1807, to the legislature by a practically non-parti- 
san vote, and twice re-elected, each time by a larger major- 
ity. "Disregarding party lines the people took me ; a large 



I II VRLES MIXER, 

number of Democrats, in their generous enthusiasm, for- 
getting the Federal printer in the defender of popular 
rights * * *. It seems now [1844J to me that the excite- 
ment produced was greatly disproportionate to the cause; 
it was like a spark in a keg of gunpowder; and from being 
well and kindly regarded, I became at once a popular fav- 
orite, and drank deep of the delirious cup of public ap- 
plause * * *. Do not doubt that the gratification was 
extreme ; 1 question whether Napoleon, when he encircled 
lii— brow with the imperial diadem, was better pleased than 
the Yankee boy who had made maple sugar with Joe 
Sprague, tied his shirt into a knapsack and gone into tin 
deep forest, sleeping on the ground under a bark roof, to 
commence a farm." He also reflected with legitimate pride 
that the Norwich folks would not think that he had done 
badly; and added: "Agreeable as the result was to myself, 
yet let me say it was in a seven-fold degree more so be- 
cause 1 knew it would fill the heart to overflowing of my 
beloved father." 

< Mi the last existing page of the Autobiography he says : 
"It might naturally be expected that the first movement I 
should make in the House, would be for a Committee to 
enquire into the conduct of Judge Cooper with a view to his 
removal * * *. 1 think his removal would have been easy. 
But then 1 had not a particle of ill will against him * * * I 
am not -ure but there was an undercurrent of feeling leading 
to something like this: 'Thank you, sir, for an opportunity 
to distinguish myself in a contest with one so able. If you 
are satisfied, 1 am.' * * * More and most weighty was 
the reason that Judge Cooper had been the soul of the 

nmission for settling the titles of the old Yankee settlers 

* and of all men he was fittest to adjudicate upon and 

carry into effect the act. * * * Barring his hastiness and 

[•bearing manner occasionally, he was an excellent judge, 
and I did not doubt his integrity. But several years after- 
wards, when 1 resident of another district, complaints were 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 43 

made against him, and 1 believe the effective charges grew 
out of the former contest here * * * and he was removed 
by Governor Snyder on an Address of both houses." 

On page 455 of the "History of Wyoming" he adds: "It 
is proper here to say, that to Thomas Cooper, Esq., one of 
the commissioners under the compromising law, in 1803 and 
1804, the settlers within the seventeen townships, and the 
Commonwealth, are largely indebted. He gave to the sub- 
ject the most devoted attention of a mind remarkably sagac- 
ious, vigorous and clear. He unravelled with unexceeded 
patience and perspecuity, the mazes of this most intricate 
subject; * * *" 

With the whole matter of the Connecticut claims treated 
at large in the History, and elsewhere, it has been 
thought best only to touch on it here in this slight way, but 
one more passage from the Autobiography will serve to 
show how the settlement effected Mr. Miner personally, and 
his broad, unselfish views of its general advantages : 

"Thus ended the intrusion law and prosecutions under 
it. So terminated the not only imposing, but absolutely 
threatening power of the Susquehanna and Delaware com- 
panies, claiming under title from the charter from Connec- 
ticut and various Indian purchases all northeastern Penn- 
sylvania. And thus were prostrated my individual expecta- 
tions, long since diminished and gradually lessened to a 
faint ray of hope, of a fortune from the ownership of sev- 
eral thousand acres in Locke, Dandolo, the Manor, and 
Usher [Townships], including my beautiful lot 39. Essential 
benefits nevertheless flowed in upon Pennsylvania from this 
moss-trooping inroad of Yankees. Large numbers of 
settlers from New England, attracted thither by the favor- 
able accounts of the pioneers, and the final adjustment of 
the land controversy, came in with considerable means and 
purchased, so that at this day when I write [1844?] all the 
upper parts of Luzerne, Wyoming, Wayne, Susquehanna 
and Bradford counties, the chief scenes of the half -bare 



44 CHAKLES MINER, 

controversy, present a population so industrious, moral and 
ssive, that it may vie with any settlement in the state 
ur we may confidently add in the Union." 

1 >ne personal letter must be disposed of here before pass- 
ing to more general matters, and the work of the assembly. 
His first long absence from home since his marriage caused 
the young father to dwell very seriously on the thought of 
parental responsibility, and aged twenty-eight he wrote the 
. earnest, if somewhat stilted letter, from which extracts 
follow, to his wife then less than twenty. 

"Lancaster, March 8, 1808. 
*' * * * A good deal of enquiry is made about you, who 
you look like, and all such questions, and some of the girls 
have flattered me so much as to say that they know I have 
a most excellent wife or I would not be so steady and cir- 
cumspect in my conduct. I hope I never may behave ill 
-1 hope my conduct may never excite a tear on the cheek 
of my Lettie, or a sigh or a blush from my children or 
friends. 1 am very sure that our happiness will always be 
in proportion to our virtue. * * * When I reflect on home 
and you — you 1 find are the first and most dear object that 
my mind rests upon. But my children [at this time Ann 
and Sarah] excite more solicitude than they used to do, 
I played with them — I loved them — they were pretty little 
objects to amuse myself with, and I was interested for 
their healths. Now they appear to me of greater import- 
ance * a> rational beings formed to take a part on the 
theater of life, and accountable hereafter for their actions 
* and Letitia. their behaviour * * * their happiness — 
perhaps their virtues may depend on us. * * * But on a 
mother who is always with them does the most responsi- 
bility rest, for she has more influence on their minds. 1 
pray you then to make yourself such a mother as you would 
wish your daughters to be when they grow up to take the 
cares of a family, and instil into their minds both by pre- 
cept and example those virtuous sentiments you are so cap- 
able i>f inculcating." 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 45 

On arriving at Lancaster (the State capital when Mr. 
Miner first sat as representative), he writes in the two ex- 
isting letters to his wife describing some of the people he 
met ; at his boarding-house he had for a companion, "Charles 
Thompson, the secretary of the old congress, one of the 
patriots of the Revolution, and a venerable old man he is." 
Other fellow-boarders were: "A jolly fat Quaker and two 
smooth-faced cits, from Philadelphia, trying to get a charter 
for a bank, the inducements being wine and bribery. Des- 
picable indeed must be their opinion of the legislature if 
they think to buy a charter with grog. * * * They offer, 
however, $75,000 besides, whether it will be accepted or 
not I do not know, but I rather think it will." 

He gives, too, in the last pages of the Antobiograp'.iw 
with gentle humor, a few sketches of his associates in the 
Assembly, whose small vanities did not escape him, always 
softening his remarks with a word of appreciation for the 
man's ability : 

"Charles Smith of Lancaster, possessed genius of the 
highest order united with many eccentricities. He was the 
most pleasing and persuasive speaker I had then ever heard. 
Of his oddities I may here mention, that he often se< 
lost in a brown study, and I have seen him suddenly rise 
from his seat — tapping the lid of his silver snuff box, as 
with a half shuffle he moved up the aisle, singing audibly 
enough to excite a smile through the House, 

'Old King Cole was a jolly old Soul." 
" * * * Dr. Michael Leib was the Magnus Apollo of 
the [democratic] party, and Grand Sachem of the Tam- 
many bucktails, in the City and Northern Liberties. Not 
tall but of good form, bold Roman, florid features — dressed 
in the extreme of fashion — hair powdered, and highly es- 
senced, he was instantly a marked object to the stranger 
entering the gallery. As a speaker he was full of animation, 
meaning always, and proving often to be, keen in retort ; 
but never a close reasoner. He produced effect rather by 



I H VRLES .MINER, 

the velocity of his missies, than the weight of his metal. 
He had a habit, with a good deal, and not ungraceful ges- 
ture, of ever and anon raising his right hand and placing 
thumb on the right side of the nose, his fore or middle 
linger on the ridge and stroking down, not without grace, 
his nasal organ ; then flourishing his hand abroad, displaying 
his white ruffles and repeating the gesture. Mr. Ingham 
': to annoy him a good deal in his shrewd replies, point- 
ing his thumb behind him, and alluding 'to the powdered 
r the other side of the post.' * * * 
ien. < )gle was an '1 by itself I.' He hailed from 
.Somerset, from whence 'more of the same name and sort' 
lot mere talents, but more refinement and education, 
have appeared on the public stage. More than six feet in 
height — slender — bent a little, his face was like an eagle's 
— a prominent and aquiline beak — an eye of fire, he was a 
very marked character. His seat was in the south-west 
corner of the House, his back to the gallery rail — his right 
hand to the wall on which was spread a large map of Penn- 
sylvania. When he was to speak every eye was turned 
toward him — striking his right pocket back, and looking 
at the ma]), he would give a puff, as if it were a half sneeze 
from bi> nose and then in a loud rather shrill voice call 
'Mr. Speaker.' In Congress Hall he would amuse himself 
by shutting quickly his steel tobacco box, making the echoes 
all over the House." 

Mr. Miner became at once a hard working member; the 
legislature convened at Lancaster on December 4, 1807, and 
he was appointed on the committee on schools, and that on 
the militia, besides being put on two other committees ap- 
pointed to consider petitions presented by him: — that 
-rttlers in Luzerne county might share in the privileges 
granted to other townships, and for a lottery to aid in 
finishing a church in Wilkes-Barre and to protect the river 
bank from further damage by the water. The next day 
he reported, favorably, of cour-e, at some length for the 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 47 

committee on the lottery, so that one is rather surprised to 
rind him so frightened, when, he makes his first motion, on 
the 14th of the same month, as he amusingly describes him- 
self to be in the Autobiography "I had introduced a resolu- 
tion the object of which was to exclude small bank bills [of 
less than five dollars from other states] from circulation. 
Leib without directly objecting, called me up to defend it. 
I attempted to do so, but every pillar in the house turned 
dark, and down I sat. I had spoken in our debating society, 
but found this a very different affair. Not long after Leib 
hr.ving introduced resolutions laudatory of Mr. Jefferson's 
administration, I prepared myself with a good deal of care 
this time, as our good Methodist friends were wont to say 
'I found freedom' and said my say I believe to the general 
satisfaction. Immediately on sitting down a dozen friends 
came, tot k me by the hand, and said 'very well.' Even 
Leib, who with all his spit-fire violence was not destitute 
of generous sentiments, came over on the House adjourn- 
ing and complimented me — but said I'll give it to you, my 
good fellow. I do not find that the little speech (for none 
of us talked long) was reported, but I remember the con- 
clusion from this flattering circumstance. The next time — 
months after — on visiting Philadelphia I met my excellent 
frieml. Charles W. Hare, who extending both hands ex- 
claimed : 'Mr. Speaker, it is National Honour that defends 
National Independence. Here would I plant the American 
standard — nail the colour to the flag-staff, and never yield 
it but with existence' * * * I take pride that though a zeal- 
ous politician in my legislative career T introdn<'<-d no mere 
party topics " 

He soon wrote to his friend, Steuben Butler, of Wilkes- 
Barre. 

"My oratory is very awkward, when put in competition 

with that of the others ; but I let dash at them. I do not 

perceive that my enemies — political, I mean — respect me the 

nor that the affection of my friends has decreased from 

my attempts/' 



_jS I UAKLES MINER, 

In the same letter he records the unsuccessful attempt 
of the opposite party to get the vote of a man, absolutely 
needed to break a tie, "by making him drunk ; but he voted 
right all the same, time after time." To celebrate this tri- 
umph of justice, Mr. Miner and his friends adjourned, after 
; he labors of the day, to a neighboring tavern, "and took 
-upper of tripe, wine, songs, and other good things.*' In 
another letter, the next term he writes to the same corres- 
pondent — Lancaster, March 18, 1808: 

"I must tell you that Governor Simon is very polite to me. 
I could not wish him to be more so and I confess I wonder 
at it for 1 am sometimes rather saucy in my language in 
the House, I have two or three times been called to order 
for lashing the Democratic party. What you tell me of 
the attempt in Kingston to injure me, I care not a rush for. 
I have done my duty faithfully and impartially and I will 
continue to do it without regard to popularity." 

It i- evident that being young and happy he got a good 
deal of fun out of the happenings in the Assembly, as well 
as felt the dignity and responsibility of the position. In 
the Aurora, Philadelphia, January 2, 1809, is a report of a 
hill that became utterly balled up by the number of motions 
ped upon it ; "A motion was then made by Mr. Miner*' 
that they "resist the execution of the U. S. Court," to which 
it gravel v appended in a note "This motion was made in 
derision." Perhaps a rather dangerous derision, since the 
State of Pennsylvania had recently been shaken by the ques- 
tion as to whether the judgments of the Supreme Court 
should be supreme. 

5ays the Autobiography. "The chief general matter of 
the tir-t session was the Impeachment of Gov. McKean, 
commenced the last winter by those who had placed him 
in power, and who now, as was familiarly said, like Acteon, 
was pursued by his own dogs. 

"In [799 on being elected Governor. McKean chose to 
line that all commissions, except those of judges, granted 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 49 

by the executive, became null and void on the inauguration 
of a new Governor. He therefore issued a proclamation 
extending all such Commissions until it should be his pleas- 
ure to grant new ones. Thus, as he and his partisans said, 
making no removals, only filling vacancies constitutionally 
arising he made a clean sweep. I do not remember that, 
like Job's servants, one was left. Of course among the 
losers there was figuratively, 'weeping and wailing and 
gnashing of teeth.) All of the Federalists (for our parcy 
held the principal appointments under Governor Mifflin) 
came out full cry against [McKean]. A few years had 
passed by and lo, we were with few exceptions, his sup- 
porters, had aided to re-elect him. and now stood between 
him and impeachment by his former friends. The chief 
offence taken by Dr. Leib and his party seems to have 
arisen from the Governor refusing to remove judges on 
the address of the two Houses. The Constitution saying 
on such addresses 'the Governor may remove — not shall. It 
was charged on the Democratic party of that day, that 
nothing delighted them more than 'to run down a buck' — 
hunt a Judge out of office. To do them justice, be it said 
there were grounds for their hostility to the Bench and Bar. 
The great system of Legal Reform now so justly popular, 
then, and for several years advocated by the Democrats, 
was opposed by us Federalists under the lead of the Bench 
and Bar. * * * Governor McKean declared that he would 
let the addressors know that 'may' meant 'wont' — so the 
Judges kept their seats and the Governor was attacked. 
Resolutions to impeach were offered, but seizing the oppor- 
tunity on the absence of one of their men, we called up the 
Resolution, and negatived it." Elsewhere he says : "By my 
casting vote I saved him from impeachment." 

Having been instrumental in excluding small bills from 
circulation in Pennsylvania, by his first resolution, as has 
been seen, Mr. Miner proceeded to uphold, throughout his 
three terms of office, as later in Congress, many practical 



- I HARLES MINER, 

questions of development and internal improvement — the 
North branch and other canals, post-roads, etc. 

"Foreseeing the growth of the coal trade at a very early 
day Mr. Miner advocated the improvement of the descend- 
ing navigation « f the Susquehanna and Lehigh rivers, pre 
dieting the connection of their waters by a railroad 1 
before such roads were generally known or thought of. In 
fact there was not then a railway in existence — save the 
tram-roads in and about the mines of Newcastle, England— 
and to those who understood this, how much like the merest 

uies of the imagination must Mr. Miner's confident 
hopes have seemed. And yet he lived to see them realized!" 
| Harvey's Lodge, No. 61, p. 432.] 

Legislature convened December 6, 1808, and on the 8th 
he offered resolutions, in sympathy with the movement that 
was -weeping all over the country, accelerated by the em- 
bargo, proposing the encouragement of sheep-raising, and of 
wool manufacture. These resolutions proposed the exemp- 
tion of all sheep from taxation, of ten sheep from attach- 
ment for debt ; a bounty on fulbblooded sheep ; that any 
militia that would wear homespun should be entirely ac- 
coutred at public expense, etc. 

In the course of his speech supporting his bill he says: 
"Patriotism conspires with interest to urge [us] to take 
some effectual measures upon this subject. The measures 
to be effectual must be liberal. It is notorious. Sir, thai 
< '.reat Britain has united with the enemy to restrict our 
Commerce. In consequence of their injustice our Govern- 
in. nt have thoughl il necessarv to lav an embargo. With- 
out now entering into the enquiry whether the measure was 
proper or not, n certainly is our duty as good citizens to 
submit to the inconveniences it produces — to obey the laws 
with all possibli ch< > 'fulness, and to relieve ourselves from 
the evils we sutler, as early and effectually as we can. And 
how i« this to be done? By manufacturing those articles 
if which v tand 1 need and which « 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 51 

import from Europe. Seven-tenths of the woolen clothes 
we wear are the manufacture of England. Cannot we 
manufacture them for ourselves? Sir, our wives, our 
daughters, our sweethearts are industrious and patriotic 
enough to clothe us all in homespun if we will furnish them 
with the materials. How shall we do this? Improve your 
breed and number of sheep." He probably was clad in 
homespun at this time, for he wore it as an object lesson. 

Of another bill of this session he says: "Another resolu- 
tion introduced by me proposed the inquiry, whether any 
legislative measure could with propriety be adopted to pro- 
mote vaccination for kine pox. The subject was referred 
to a committee, and with their consent I prepared and pre- 
sented a report thereon." [Which was passed, printed and 
widely circulated, thus "bringing the matter in an official 
form before the people" and doing good educative work]. 

"I did not see clearly, on introducing my resolution, what 
steps of practical utility could be taken by the public 
authorities ; but my main purpose was to bring the matter in 
an official form before the people ; to make it a matter of 
discussion: to arouse a spirit of inquiry; to dissipate a 
prejudice; to diffuse information; and thus, through every 
pari of the community, to extend vaccination for the kine- 
pox. My motives and efforts, I had the pleasure to know, 
were duly appreciated. Intelligent philanthropists in vari- 
ous parts of the state, in and out of the medical profession, 
and especially in Philadelphia, corresponded with me upon 
the subject; and among them I have particular pride in 
naming the late John Vaughan. one of the most unwearied 
of philanthropists that ever lived or died. To know r would 
be happiness, to believe is a pleasure, that I was the means 
of saving one life; a single son to the hopes of his father; 
a single daughter in health and unimpaired beauty to the 
embraces of her Mother." 

On January 7, T809, a resolution was offered, proposing 



- » I HARLES MINER, 

that Pennsylvania's senators and representatives in Con- 
gress be instructed to use their influence to have the Con- 
stitution amended so that the several States might elect 
their senators in the same manner as they did their repre- 
sentatives. Taking the same position as a firm supporter 
of the Constitution as it was, that he later maintained in 
the House, Mr. Miner spoke against the proposal. "It must 
be evident," he said, "that the Constitution was so formed 
on purpose to prevent the individual States from constantly 
interfering with and troubling the Nation by applications 

r amendments." 

Again re-elected, in 1812, one letter remains, announcing 
hi-- arrival at Harrisburg, where the Assembly convened 
that year. "My old acquaintances seem glad to see me, and 
there appears nothing yet like passion or party feeling." 

On the 91 h of December the legislature was invited to a 
"bull-bait," and on the next day Mr. Miner wrote a horrified 
letter to his paper, "The Gleaner," and also introduced a 
ilution. which was adopted almost unanimously, the 
other members being equally shocked. "Conceiving that 
every wise and humane Government ought to protect ani- 
mals from cruelty ; that the practice is disgraceful," etc. 
"Therefore. Resolved, That a committee be appointed to 
bring in a bill suppressing the practice of bull-baiting, and 
providing for the more effectual punishment of persons who 
shall be guilty of cruelty to animals." 

The next, and last bill to need mention, is benignly en- 
titled " \n \ct to Promote the Comfort of the Poor." in 
which he said : "The first aim of a wise Legislature should 
be to guard the weak from oppression, and so far to re- 
strain the hand of power that it should not even in pursuit 
of its own rights of property, be enabled to trample on the 
rights of humanity. * * * Is it not an error that under 
the present laws, every article of property * * * earned 
by the industry of the wife, may be taken for the debt of 
the husband. Resolved. Therefore. That the following 



A PENNSYLVANIA IMONKKk. 53 

articles should be secure to each family from execution or 
other legal process for debts hereafter to be contracted, to- 
wit : Two beds and the necessary bedding ; household 
utensils not exceeding in value 15 dollars; one cow; the 
necessary tools of a tradesman, not exceeding in value 20 
dollars ; a spinning-wheel." The sufferings of the poor al- 
ways bore heavily upon him, so this "Act" gave him more 
"pleasures of memory" than any other of his legislative 
career, the exclusion of small bills coming next. 

In one of his letters is the characteristic exclamation : 
"Oh, how I wish I could make everyone happy ;" on the 
margin of Pope's Universal Prayer he wrote opposite the 
stanza : 

"Teach me to feel another's woe, 
To hide the fault I see : 

That mercy I to others show, 
That mercy show to me." 

"I would rather have written this than any other verse 
in the English language," while the passage from the Bible 
most frequently on his lips was : "pure religion and undefiled 
before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and 
widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted 
from the world." 

Meanwhile, at home, in the intervals between legislative 
work, he was not only a busy printer and editor, but engaged 
in other laborious and responsible toils ; contracting for the 
transportation of the mails between Wilkes-Barre and 
Northumberland, etc., and acting as assistant in taking the 
Luzerne county part of the census of 1810. 

Returning with empty saddle bags from one such mail 
carrying tour he overtook a stranger, a surveyor, loaded 
heavily. "Let me relieve you of part of your load, friend. 
You are going to Wilkes-Barre, I suppose, — he said 
he was — and without more ado * * * he put into my 
saddle-bags, compasses, chains, and some few other 
things." Taking them 40 miles Mr. Miner delivered them 



e^ ■ HARLES M !XI:K. 

and thought no more about it. but years afterward, on his 
removal to Chester county, the man came to thank him. 
"His son was then Prothonotary or Recorder of the County 
of Chester — both of course thorough-going opponents of 
my Federal Principles — so that their good word, freely 
given, that, however, much of a Heretic in Politics, I was 
personally a clever fellow, was of very great service in es- 
tablishing for me a good name." 

As has been seen, at one time, on the suggestion of a 
friendly opponent in the village debating society, he had 
thought of becoming a lawyer, entered his name as a stu- 
dent, and read his Blackstone through twice, as well as 
Jones on Bailments, etc., but reluctantly gave up the ide 
he said, because of the pressure of "this day our daily bread. 
given to faith but faith attended by work." Again, in the 
fever-autumn of 1804. in the valley, he showed the versa- 
tility of his usefulness by acting successfully as a volunteer 
nurse, in which capacity he was often summoned, in later 
years, especially in severe fever cases. In those days trained 
nurses were almost unknown ; so that Mr. Miner's sagacious 
foresight was illustrated by his remark, in the Autobiogra- 
phy, that "when population becomes dense, a few persons, 
fitted by gentleness, watchfulness, and care, should be 
trained to the profession, they taking the lead, the neighbors 
i sting." 

In 1807, on one of his trips to Philadelphia, he met a 
kindred spirit, an Irishman who, in the course of an inter- 
esting conversation, spoke of having been freely with the 
-irk during a very severe run of spotted fever. "Were 
you not afraid of catching the disease?" "Oh, I was willing 
to take chances with my neighbors ! There was goodness 
and philosophy in that. Son of St. Patrick I wish I knew 
your name, you have often been present to my thoughts." 

In 1809 he had sold the Federalist to Sidney Tracy and 
Steuben Butler, but in Septemebr, 1810, resumed its con- 
duct. Butler and Tracy retiring. The next year, according 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 55 

to the fashion of frequent and sometimes confusing changes 
of newspaper names which has always prevailed in the his- 
tory of American journalism, it became the WilkesBarre 
Gleaner and Lucerne Advertiser, the latter part of the title 
being afterwards dropped. 

To the Luzerne Federalist for September 7, 1810, when 
still "printed by Tracy and Butler," Charles Miner con- 
tributed a little story which was destined to be copied from 
one end of the country to the other, to reappear in school 
reading-books down to this present year, 1913, and to fur- 
nish America, as has been said, with its most frequently 
used familiar quotation — "to have an axe to grind." The 
story — "Who'll Turn Grindstone?" afterwards became the 
first in the series entitled "Essays from the Desk of Poor 
Robert the Scribe," the title of which so closely resembled 
Franklin's "Poor Richard" that the famous quotation has 
sometimes been assigned to the elder philosopher. But Mr. 
Miner wrote to the Norwich Jubilee of 1859 that he got the 
idea of such a series from Samuel Trumbull, the son of the 
editor of the local newspaper in Norwich : "a young man 
of a good deal of reading, and of ready wit. He wrote 
several essays under the head of 'From the Desk of Beri 
Hesden ;' the hint and name of the essays 'From the Desk 
of Poor Robert the Scribe' I am sure I owed to him." 

As the famous tale was somewhat modified in its later 
issues, a verbatim reprint of its first appearance has literary 
and biographical value. 

Who'll Turn Grindstone 
When I was a little boy, Messrs. Printers, I remember 
one cold winter's morning, I was accosted by a smiling man, 
with an ax on his shoulder, — "My pretty boy," said he, "has 
your father a grindstone?" "Yes, sir," said I. "You are a 
fine little fellow," said he, "will you let me grind my ax 
on it ?" Pleased with his compliment of "fine little fellow" 



i iiaki.es miner, 

— '•( i, yes, sir," — I answered, "it is down in the shop.'' 
"And will you my man," said he. patting me on the head, 
"get a little hot water?" How could I refuse? I ran and 
soon brought a kettle full. "How old are you, and what's 
your name," continued he without waiting for a reply. 
"] .in >nre you are one of the finest lads that I have ever 
seen, will you just turn a few minutes for me?" Tickled 
with the flattery like a little fool I went to work, and bitterly 
did 1 rue the day. It was a new ax — and I toiled and 
tugged, till I was almost tired to death. The school bell 
rung, and I could not get away, — my hands were blistered, 
and it was not half ground. At length, however, the ax 
was :diarpened, and the man turned to me. with "Now, 
you little rascal, you've played the truant, — scud to school, 
or you'll rue it." Alas, thought I, it was hard enough to 
turn grindstone this cold day. but now to be called "little 
d" was too much. It sunk deep in my mind, and often 
have I thought of it since. 

"When 1 see a Merchant, over polite to his customer^, 
begging them to taste a little brandy, and throwing half his 
goods on the counter — thinks 1, that man has an ax to grind. 

"When I have seen a man of doubtful character, patting 
a girl on the cheek, praising her sparkling eye and ruby 
lip. and giving her a sly squeeze, — Beware my girl, tho't 
I. or you will tind to your sorrow, that you have been turn- 
ing grindstone for a villain. 

"When I see a man flattering the people, making great 
professions of attachment to liberty, who is in private life 
a tyrant, Methinks, look out good people, that fellow woidd 
set you to turning grindstone. 

"When I see a man. holding a fat office, sounding 'the 
horn on the borders,' to call the people to support the man. 
on whom he depends for his office, Well thinks I, no wonder 
the man is zealous in the cause, he evidently has an ax to 
grind. 

"When 1 see a Governor, foisted into the chair of state, 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. S7 

without a single qualification to render him either respect- 
able or useful, — Alas ! methinks, deluded people, you are 
doomed for a season to turn grindstone for a booby. 

"When I see a foreigner expelled from his own country, 
and turning patriot in this — setting up a PRESS, and mak- 
ing a great ado about OUR liberties, I am very apt to think, 
— tho' that man's ax has been dulled in his own country, he 
evidently intends to sharpen it in this." 

In the reissue in book form the last three paragraphs were 
replaced by the following: 

"When 1 see a man hoisted in office by party spirit — 
without a single qualification to render him either respect- 
able or useful — Alas! methinks, deluded people, you are 
doomed for a season to turn grindstone for a booby." 

This was the only "Poor Robert" essay to appear in the 
Federalist; but when, after a few months cessation, the 
paper reappeared as the Gleaner the series was resumed, 
not in consecutive issues. None of the later essays attained 
the currency and fame of the first ; but, as Captain Abraham 
Bradley, father of the then first assistant postmaster gen- 
eral, wrote from Washington in 1815 to Jesse Fell: "The 
editor of the Gleaner has acquired the highest reputation 
among all ranks of people and served his country and the 
cause he has espoused, at least equal to any editor in the 
United States. His productions are copied into most of the 
papers from Maine to Ohio, and some of those in the south. 
Even the editor of the National Intelligencer cannot with- 
hold, with all his Democratic austerity, from republishing 
some pieces which have no acrimony against his beloved 
system of democracy. Everyone is charmed." 

August 6, 1813, appeared the following prospectus of the 
complete series in book form : "Proposals, at the Gleaner 
office, are now made, to publish the 'Essays From the Desk 
of Poor Robert the Scribe/ containing lessons in Manners, 
Morals, and Domestic Economy." Subscription papers were 
requested by October 1, and were also received at the office 



;s VRLES MINER, 

of the Literary Visitor, a creditable little monthly miscel- 
lany issued in Wilkes-Barre by Steuben Butler. The volume, 
however, did not appear until July, 1815, when it was issued 
from Asher Miner's office in Doylestown. Thirty-two 
essays and a piece of verse comprised its contents, in a 
sixteen mo. of 120 pages. 

Mr. Miner himself hardly seemed to realize the wide- 
spread vogue of his famous saying, though he once wrote 
of the series: "They made me many friends; among the 
rest the pioneer of American literature [Joseph DennieJ 
complimented me by a friendly note and a volume of his 
Port Folio." 

1 once began to keep note of the times I found the phrase 
in current print, but soon gave up the attempt as indefinitely 
extensive. Three or four illustrations are as good as a 
hundred : '"The letter indicates that the writer had an ax 
to grind" ("Great Cases of Detective Bums," by Dana 
Gatlin, McClure's Magazine, April, 191 1 ) ; "I've no ax to 
grind for myself" ("The Street Called Straight," Harper's 
Magazine, June, 1912) ; "To put the power of directing the 
finances of the American people into the hands of politicians 
with 'axes to grind' would be an irreparable blunder" 
(Boston Daily Advertiser, June 26, 1913) ; and so on con- 
stantly. In Robert Grant's novel, "The Chippendales," the 
phrase is used in four separate places; I have seen it pasted 
over the whole side of the delivery wagon of a New York 
daily newspaper in an exciting city election; and I have 
heard it in a London theater in a translation of a play from 
the French, 

"If we had to turn our own grindstones we wouldn't have 
50 many axes to grind." (Cincinnati Enquirer, October, 
[914.) 

"I fear it is that kind of axe that people bring not to use 
but to grind." (G. K. < Ihesterton, Illustrated London News, 
November 14, 1914. ) 

"Publishers, critics, and reviewers who have axes to 
grind." (Nation, March 4, 1915.) 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 59 

Everyone who has studied the newspapers of Washing- 
ton's, John Adams', and Jefferson's time knows that the 
asperities of political debate were such as to make the 
journalistic exchanges of the Taft-Wilson-Roosevelt cam- 
paign of 1912 seem comparatively gentle. Here is an ex- 
ample: "C s M r, answer to these, and then blush 

for the blackness of your designs, the corruption of your 
heart, the malignity of your soul." This was from the 
Luzerne Democrat of November 15, 181 1, the local organ 
of the rival party, which had, four months before, cordially 
remarked (the "wretch" being the same innocent Mr. 
Miner) : "The wretch who could deliberately call a democ- 
racy a tyranny, merits the curses of a free people, and is 
justly entitled to the epithet of villian." 

Mr. Miner was able to retort in kind : one of his political 
opponents, he characterized on July 24, 1812, as "a nui- 
sance that disgraces the county ;" and "without character to 
lose." A more general attack, which reads strangely as com- 
ing from so temperate a man, was this [October 8, 1913 1 : 
"He that is in favor of burdening the mouth of labour 
with a tax on whiskey so enormous as to be more than 
double what it was in Adams' time, why let him vote for 
Democracy." The most ardent tariff-reformer of our day, 
or the most earnest vote-getter, would hardly venture to 
make such an appeal ; but it must be remembered that liquor 
was then considered a food, to be dispensed, not dispensed 
with. 

The Gleaner's attitude during the war of 1812 was that 
of the Federalist press generally : the war was a mistake, 
and badly managed after it was begun ; but, once started, 
had to be carried through. Its conduct, however, was a 
legitimate subject for criticism : "How fatal have been 
our errors! How poor, weak, and miserable our policy!" 
[October 2. 1S12.] 

In his last number for 1813 and the following issue Mr. 
Miner wrote favoring "the opening of a communication 



OO HARLES MINKk, 

:.) the Susquehanna to Philadelphia, by a road or railway 
iruin Wilkes-Barre to the Lehigh, thence by that river to 
the Delaware, and thence to Philadelphia." * * * "( >ur 
public improvements must grow with our growth and 
strengthen with our strength. : * * I appeal to the judi- 

us men who have witnessed the failure of our grandest 
i lans, if they have not miscarried because they were dis 
proportionate to the necessity ~md ability of the countrv. 
1 hope our grand-children may live to see a com 
rail-way from this place to the Lehigh, and a canal 
from thence to Philadelphia." 

This was certainly a very earl)- prophecy ; and it is a 
curious fact that while seven railroads now enter Wilkes- 
Barre, two of them circuitously rising over the mountain 
1>\ the customary locomotive haul, thousands of tons a year 
are -till drawn to the heights above the Lehigh by an in- 
clined plane such as Mr. Miner must have had in his mind. 
1 1 e was not the pioneer in coal-development in the Wy- 
oming valley, but he materially promoted it by his articles 
in the Cleaner, in 1813-1814, and otherwise. The story of 
his introducing Mauch Chunk coal into Philadelphia has 
been often told, by himself and others; perhaps the best 
account of the early enterprise is given in a letter he wrote 
to Samuel J. Packer,* twenty years after, in which he shows 
that he and Jacob Cist were the first to make practicable 
the use of anthracite in Philadelphia: 

Wilkes-Barre, Nov. 17, 1833. 

Dear Sir: "Your favor of the 7th instant was duly 
received: 1 avail myself of the first moment of leisure to 
give you 'some account of the discovery of the Mauch 
< "hunk coal, and the measures devised, at an early day. to 
bring it to market.' 

'A hunter first discovered the black earth that covers 

r. Packer was chairman of the committee of the Pennsylvania 
Senate on the coal trade, and had asked for his expert knowledge. 
Hi- letter was quoted entire in the report read in the Senate, March 
4, 1834, and printed at Harrisburg, 18.^4. 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONKI.U. 



61 



the coal, at the old mine at Mauch Chunk, and reported 
the extraordinary appearance to J. Weiss, Esq., an intelli- 
gent gentleman who resided at Lehighton, within ten or 
twelve miles of the spot. An examination was immediately 
made, and anthracite coal found within a few feet of the 
surface. The land, being extremely rough and barren, had 
not been appropriated. The land was taken up by Mr. 
Weiss, and a company formed, principally of public-spirited 
citizens of Philadelphia ; the mine was opened, and some 
small parcels taken to the city ; but the difficulty of kindling 
the coal and the facility of obtaining that from Liverpool 
and Virginia prevented its introduction into use, and with 
a hundred other speculations of the day it slept, was for- 
gotten by the public, and scarcely remembered by the 
owners of stock. 

"After twenty years' repose the subject was awakened by 
the war of 1812. Jesse Fell, Associate Judge, one of the 
most estimable citizens of Wyoming, after various experi- 
ments, had shown the practicability of burning anthracite 
coal in grates, and the article hid been in extensive use in 
Wilkes-Barre and the neighboring towns for several years 
previous to the commencement of hostilities ; and its value, 
therefore, was known and properly appreciated. Com- 
merce being suspended with England, and the coasting trade 
interrupted by British cruisers, so that foreign or Virginia 
coal could not be procured, fuel, and especially coal for 
manufacturing purposes, rose in Philadelphia to very high 
prices. Jacob Cist, of Wilkes-Barre, my intimate and much 
lamented friend, had derived from his father a few shares 
of stock in the old Lehigh Coal Company ; and in conversa- 
tion at his house, one evening, it was resolved to make an 
examination of the mines at Mauch Chunk and the Lehigh 
river, to satisfy ourselves whether it would be prudent and 
practicable to convey coal from thence to Philadelphia. 
Mr. Robinson, a mutual friend, active as a man of business, 
united with us in the enterprise. In the latter part of 1813 



62 I BARLES MINER, 

we visited Mauch Chunk, examined the mines, and made 
all the inquiries suggested by prudence respecting the navi- 
gation of the river Lehigh ; and made up our minds to 
hazard the experiment if a sufficiently liberal arrangement 
could he made with the company. Our propositions were 
met with the utmost promptitude and liberality by Godfrey 
Hagar, the president, Mr. Wampole, secretary, and the 
Other members. A lease was obtained, giving us liberty for 
ten vears to take what coal we pleased, and to use what 
lumber we could find and might need, on their tract of 
10,000 acres of land, the only consideration exacted being 
that we should work the mines, and every year take to the 
city a small quantity of coal — the coal to remain our own. 
The extremely favorable terms of the lease, to us, will show 
how low the property was then estimated, how difficult 
a matter it was deemed to bring the coal to market, and 
how great were the obstacles to bringing it into general use. 

'"During the winter of 1813-14 Mr. Robinson commenced 
opening the mines, both at Rover Run and on the mountain ; 
but other more inviting objects presenting, he sold his right 
to William Hillhouse, of New Haven, Connecticut, in the 
spring of the latter year. Mr. Cist then managed his own 
part of the concern ; Mr. Hillhouse and myself entered 
June 2, 1814) into business together, the management of 
it to be left principally with me. 

"The situation of Mauch Chunk, in the midst of barren 
mountains and a sparse population, rendered it necessary 
to obtain provisions, teams, miners, ark-builders, and other 
laborers from a distance. I made immediate arrangements 
to enter upon business, and on the 8th June arrived at 
Lausanne with my hands. * * * On Tuesday, the 9th of 
August, I being absent and there being a fresh in the river, 
Mr. Cist started off my first ark, sixty-five feet long — 
fourteen feet wide, with twenty-four tons of coal. * * * 
The stream wild, full of rocks, the channel crooked, in less 
than eighty rods from the place of starting the ark struck 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 63 

on a ledge and broke in her bows. The lads stripped them- 
celves nearly naked, to stop the leak with their clothes. 
* * * At dusk they were at Easton, fifty miles. On Wed- 
nesday they sailed from Easton, * * * and at night arrived 
at Black's Eddy. Thursday, nth, went six miles below 
Trenton to White House; * * * Friday, 12th, arrived at 
Burlington; 13th, to Ten Mile Point; Sunday, 14th, ar- 
rived in the city, at 8 a. m. Monday unloaded and delivered 
the coal. * * * 

Expenses on the voyage and returning. . . .$ 28.27 
Wages, including three pilots 47-5° 

$ 75-77 

Ark cost us 130.00 

24 tons of coal, raising from mine 24.00 

Hauling 9 miles to landing* 96.00 

Loading into ark 5.00 

$330-77 

"So that, in the first experiment, the coal cost us about 
14 dollars a ton in the city. 

"I have been somewhat minute in giving you the details 
because this ark was the pioneer, and led off the coal trade, 
now so extensive and important, in Pennsylvania. This 
effort of ours was the acorn from which the mighty oak of 
the present Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company has 
grown. 

"But while we pushed forward our labors at the mine, 
hauling coal and building arks, we had the greater difficulty 
to overcome of inducing the public to use the coal when 
brought to their doors, much as it was needed. We pub- 
lished handbills in English and German, stating the mode 

*"The fact may not be uninteresting that we were obliged to pay 
$4.00, and for much of the coal hauled $4.50 a ton, over an exceed- 
ingly rough road, where now [1833] by railway, it is transported 
for twenty-five cents a ton. Such are the triumphs of human indus- 
try and art; such is the difference between the first experimental 
steps of a great enterprise anrl the work effected bv capital and 
skill." 



- MINER, 

of burning the coal, either in grates, smiths' fires or stoves. 
Numerous certificates were obtained and printed from 
blacksmiths and others who had successfully used the coal. 
Mr. Cist found a model of a new coal stove and got a num- 
ber cast.* Together, we went to a number of houses in the 
city and prevailed on the masters to allow us to kindle 

3 of anthracite in their grates, erected to burn Liverpool 
coal. We attended at Blacksmiths' shops and prevailed 
on some to alter the Iron so that they could burn the 
anthracite coal, and often were obliged to treat the journey- 
men, who were some of them much averse to the trouble 
of learning to use a new sort of fuel. Great as were our 
united exertion- (and Mr. Cist, if they were meritorious, 
deserves the most commendation), necessity accomplished 
more than our labor. Charcoal advanced in price, and wis 
difficult to be got. Manufacturers were forced to try the 
experiment, and everyday's use convinced them, and thos< 

i who witnessed their fires, of the great value of anthra- 
cite coal. Josiah White, then engaged in some manufac- 
ture of iron, it was understood, with characteristic enter- 
prise and spirit brought the article into successful use 
hi- works, from purchases made of our agent, and learned 
its incomparable value. 

"We sent down a considerable number of arks, three out 

of every four of which stove and sunk on the way; the 

loss, however, though heavy, was lessened by the sale, at 

a moderate price of the cargoes, as they lay along the shores 

in the bed of the Lehigh, to the smiths of Allentown, 

thlehem, and the neighborhood, who drew them ;r 
when the water became low. We were just learning that 
our arks were far too large, and the loads too heavy for 
the stream, and were making preparations to build coal boats 

rs rhoraas used to tell a story that amused her father, of a 
man trying to make the hard coal burn. He poked till he was tired. 
1 the stove door, saying: "Well, go out then," went a\va>. 
ished on returning later to find a clear red hot fire! 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 65 

to carry about ten tons each, that would be connected to- 
gether when they arrived at Easton. Much had been 
taught us, but at a heavy cost, by the experiments of 1814 
and '15. Peace came, and found us in the midst of our 
enterprise ; the Philadelphia harbor was opened ; Liver- 
pool and Richmond coal came in abundant supplies ; and 
anthracite fell to a price far below the cost of shipment. 
I need hardly add, the business was abandoned, leaving 
several hundred tons of coal on the bank at the mine, and 
the most costly part of the work done to take out si 
thousands of tons more. Our losses were met with the 
spirit of men of youth and enterprise ; we turned our at- 
tention to other branches of industry. * * * 

"As one of the pioneers in the great work of introducing; 
the use of anthracite coal into our cities and upon our sea- 
board, I cannot but look with great pride and pleasure upon 
the success which has followed, and grown upon, our 
humble exertions — a success, I need hardly say, infinitely 
beyond the utmost stretch of our imaginations." 

His imagination had certainly been prophetic, and so it 
continued to be. For convenience sake a few later antici- 
pations and verifications may be given here. In 1830 he 
wrote an extended article for the Anthracite Register. 
Philadelphia, estimating the selling price of coal lands in the 
Wyoming valley, at that time, at ten to twenty dollars an 
acre, but declaring that while previously there had never 
been taken to market, from all the mines in Pennsylvania, 
more than about 150,000 tons in any one year, the demand 
must greatly increase. A prominent point for business 
would be "Wilkes-Barre, the county town, a borough of 
more than 1,000 inhabitants, and now having eleven dry- 
goods stores. The situation is eligible, the town-plot large 
and handsomely laid out; and it must be the centre of an 
extensive trade and the site of a large business." Twenty- 
four years later, March 22, T854, he was writing to his 
friend, Hendrick B. Wright of Plymouth (Democratic 



66 C QARLES MINER, 

congressman I : "Wonderful excitement prevails here in 
': speculations. Several have sold at 200 dollars an acre. 
thinking it a great sum — intrinsically worth $2,000 an acre. 
Bowkley, just returned from England, assures us of re- 
peated sales there, to the amount of some millions, at 1000 
pounds sterling an acre." The value of anthracite coal 
lands has for a long time [191 5] been double his $2000 
mark. At one time he foretold that there would be a Wy- 
oming output (doubtless using the word "Wyoming" in a 
general sense) of 20,000,000 tons a year by 1880. In 1882 
the shipment from the Wyoming region alone was 14,000- 
000 tons, and in 1880. from all the anthracite region, 25,700,- 
000. In 1912 the Wyoming output was 37.000,000, and the 
total 73,700,00. 

Xor was his eye less keenly fixed upon the economic and 
governmental phases of the anthracite problems of the far 
future. In the 1830 article already quoted he prophesied 
the monopolizing of anthracite coal by the "interests," which 
has been fulfilled absolutely: "Should capitalists step in 
and monopolize coal lands, a thing not difficult to be done, 
in a great degree, as is generally imagined, they would then 
realize from the public large profits; but it would be a sub- 
ject for regret." 

In j 855 he anticipated the great question of nationaliza- 
tion of mines, in Alaska or elsewhere, which was outlined 
by executive action by President Roosevelt in 1906, and is 
stirring up all the four political parties in 1913. Said Mr. 
Miner in a second letter to Hendrick B. Wright ( November 
29, [855) : 

"' hn -team navy is growing, and must greatly increase. 
Bituminous coal may partly answer; anthracite better, and 
where smoke is to be avoided, indispensable, indispensable. 
Companies are fast monopolizing the comparatively limited 
anthracite coal-fields, and presently can combine, and will, 
to give law to the market, and the government be at their 
mercy, as they .ire at the railroads' for the transportation 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 67 

of the mails. The possession of 2000 or 3000 acres of coal- 
land here, having an opening to the Chesapeake, and, more 
important, to the lake frontier, where the tug of war must 
be made, would give the government immense advantage 
and security. They could buy in open market when the 
price ruled fair. If an attempt was made at monopoly or 
extortion, they could resort to their own. The very fact 
of their owning it would prevent the attempt. The argu- 
ment, advantages, probable necessities, certain conveniences, 
and utility, might be followed out, — every advance with aug- 
mented power of demonstration. * * * The cost of a single 
steamship of war would now purchase 2000 acres in the 
heart of the Wyoming valley." 

But we must return to our chronological story of Mr. 
Miner's life, and to his newspaper career in 1813. Becom- 
ing sole editor of the Gleaner, he found time to start another 
series of essays, in his familiar manner, this time entitled 
"The Cogitations of My Uncle John." It never attained 
the success of its predecessor, but some of the papers were 
copied, as before, by distant journals. The publication of 
the Gleaner was interrupted, between March 10 and April 
16, 1813. by a serious fire ; in the same year Mr. Miner 
built a house, at the corner of Union and Franklin streets, 
which served not only for his family but for the news- 
paper, until its sale in 1816. The building was torn down 
as late as 1887. 

Meanwhile, as usual, he continued to find spare time for 
another employment, for in 181 5, he ran a "land-office," for 
the sale of real estate. This business was disposed of after 
a nine months' trial. 

Somewhat less practical, but far more lasting, was the 
publication of his famous ballad of "James Bird," in 1814. 
Mr. Miner was no poet, but an occasional versifier. In 
"James Bird" he found a thrilling subject of deep human 
interest, and the ballad has never gone out of the public 
mind. 



58 • HARLES MINER, 

James Bird, a boy from Exeter, just across the river from 
Wilkes-Barre, was a volunteer in the war of 1812; fought 
bravely in the Lawrence, in Commodore Perry's battle of 
Lake Erie ; was severely wounded, but refused to leave 
the deck ; and was promoted for gallantry to be orderly 
sergeant of marines. When Perry was ordered to the sea- 
board, Bird deserted his post, not his country, in order to 
rejoin his loved commander, and was arrested at Pittsburg, 
rt-martialled, refused time to appeal to Perry, convicted, 
and shot. Here is his story, as told by Mr. Miner, and 
wept over by generations of readers : 

The Ballad of James Bird. 
Sons of freedom, listen to me. 

And ye daughters, too give ear. 
You a sad and mournful story 

As was ever told, shall hear. 

Hull, you know, his troops surrendered, 

And defenceless left the west: 
Then our forces quick assembled, 

The invaders to resist. 

Amongst the troops that marched to war. 

Were the Kingston volunteers ; 
( aptain Thomas them commanded. 

To protect our west frontiers. 

render were the scenes of parting, 

Mothers wrung their hands and cried. 
Maidens wept their swains in secret. 
Fathers strove their tears to hide. 

There is one among the number. 

Tall and graceful is his mien. 
Firm bis step, his look undaunted, 

Scarce a nobler vouth was seen. 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 69 

One sweet kiss he snatched from Mary, 
Craved his mother's prayer, and more, 

Pressed his father's hand, and left them 
For Lake Erie's distant shore. 

Mary tried to say "Farewell, James," 
Waved her hand, but nothing spoke, 

"Good-bye, Bird, may Heaven preserve you," 
From the rest at parting broke. 

Soon they came where noble Perry 

Had assembled all his fleet ; 
Then the gallant Bird enlisted, 

Hoping soon the foe to meet. 

Where is Bird? The battle rages; 

Is he in the strife or no? 
Now the cannon roars tremendous ; 

Dare he meet the hostile foe ? 

Aye ! behold him ! see him, Perry ! 
In the selfsame ship they fight ; 
Though his messmates fall around him 
"thing can his soul affright. 

But behold ! a ball has struck him ; 

See the crimson current flow ; 
"Leave the deck !" exclaimed brave Perry ; 

"No!" cried Bird. "I will not go." 

"Here on deck 1 took my station. 

Here will Bird his cutlass ply ; 
I'll stand by you, gallant captain. 

Till we conquer or we die." 

Still he fought, though faint and bleeding. 

Till our stars and stripes waved o'er ns. 
Victory having crowned our efforts, 

All triumphant o'er our foes. 



jO CHARLES MINER, 

And did Bird receive a pension? 

Was he to his friends restored? 
Xo ; nor never to his bosom 

Gasped the maid his heart adored. 

Rut there came most dismal tidings 
From Lake Erie's distant shore ; 

Better far if Bird had perished 
Midst the battle's awful roar. 

"Dearest parents," said the letter, 

is will bring sad news to you; 
Do r.ot mourn your first beloved, 
Though this brings his last adieu. 

"1 must suffer for deserting 

From the brig Niagara; 
Read this letter, brothers, sisters. 

Tis the last you'll hear from me." 

Sad and gloomy was the morning 
Bird was ordered out to die; 

Where's the breast not dead to pity 
But for him would heave a sigh? 

Lo ! he fought so brave at Erie, 
Freely bled and nobly dared : 

Let his courage plead for mercy, 
Let his precious life be spared. 

See him march and bear his fetters : 
Hark ! they clank upon the ear ; 

But his step is firm and manly. 
For his heart ne'er harbored fear. 

See him kneel upon his coffin. 

Sure his death can do no good ; 
Spare him ! spare ! O God, they shoot him 

Ob ! his bosom streams with blood. 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. /I 

Farewell, Bird ; farewell forever ; 

Friends and home he'll see no more ; 
But his mangled corpse lies buried 

On Lake Erie's distant shore. 

As this poem and its facts are continually being asked for 
in the press it has been thought best to add Mr. Miner's own 
account as given in The Gleaner, April 28, 181 5: 

"At the commencement of the late war, a company of 
men from Kingston, in this county, under the command of 
Captain Thomas, volunteered their services to the govern- 
ment. When the fatal disaster befell our army under 
Gen. Hull of Detroit, and large reinforcements were 
wanted, the Kingston Volunteers were called upon to per- 
form their tour of duty. They marched with alacrity, and 
remained under the command of General Harrison, until 
the reduction of Upper Canada rendered it prudent to dis- 
pense with their further services. 

"Among the Volunteers, was a young man by the name 
of James Bird, aged about twenty years ; he was born in 
Exeter, where his parents now reside. Bird enlisted in the 
Marines while at Erie, and in the memorable engagement 
of September 10th served on board the Lawrence, under 
the immediate command of Commodore Perry." 

The following notice of his conduct in the engagement 
was derived from Mr. Carkhuft, one of the Volunteers, and 
appears in the Gleaner of Nov. 26, 1813: — 

" 'James Bird, son of Mr. J. Bird, of Exeter, was on board 
the Lawrence, with the gallant Perry, on the glorious tenth 
of September. The battle raged — many a poor fellow fell 
around him — Bird did his duty like a hero. Towards the 
close of the engagement, a cannister shot struck him on 
the shoulder as he was stooping to his gun. He was in- 
stantly covered with blood, and his officer ordered him be- 
low. He ventured to disobey, preferring to do duty whil 
he had life, to abandoning his post. But the blood flowed 



-J ( II \RI.I S MINER, 

so fast that another order was issued to go below. He ran 
down — got a hasty bandage on the wound, came again on 
deck, and although his left arm was useless, yet he han 
cartridges, and performed the utmost service in his power 
with his right, until the stars and stripes waved glorioush . 
victorious over the foe.' 

"The following extract of a letter from Bird, will speak 
for itself, and show the vicissitudes of fortune, attending 
a state of war. I called on his parents for the letter. Hi- 
father was not at home, — The anguish and the tears of his 
mother made me almost regret that 1 had mentioned the 
painful subject. If you, reader, had been there, I think you 
would have agreed with me, that the public ought to reap 
great and certain benefits from a war that creates so many 
causes of private grief, — I do not mean to complain of any 
officer, or of any man, but I could not help thinking that 
the bravery and good conduct of Bird in the battle, mighl 
have plead for his pardon. Hull gave up a whole army, 
yet he was pardoned. Brack murdered poor Dixon, but 
Brack was not sentenced to die. Bird had performed more 
services than either, and his crime was much less injurious 
or malignant, but there was no pardon for him. It was 
the fortune of war. Indeed war is a cruel monster, at 
least I thought so when I reflected on the death of the brave 
Bird, and saw his mother's tears. But I detain you from 
the letter : — 

'Dear Parents, 

'1 take my pen in hand to write a few words to you which 
will bring bad news; but do not lament, nor make sad 
moans for the loss of your first beloved and dearest son 
James. 

'Dear Parents, brothers and sister, relations and friends. 
I do write to you a most sad and dismal letter, such as 
never before came from any your beloved children. 1 
have often sat down and wrote a few lines to you with 
pleasure; but 1 am sorry at present to let you know my 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 73 

sad and deplorable situation. 1 am the most miserable 
and desolate child of the family,— Dear Parents, let my 
brothers and sisters read this letter, for it is the last they 
can ever receive from my hand, for by the laws of our 
country I am doomed and sentenced to death, for deserting 
from the marines at Lake Erie, and am now confined on 
board the United States brig Niagara. 

' And O! loving Parents, my time is but short here 
earth. 1 have but a few moments to make my peace with 
my maker, — I leave you only for a short time here on earth. 
I leave you only for a short time here in this most trouble- 
some world; but I hope that by constant prayer, we shall 
meet in the world above, to part no more.' 

[The remaining part of the letter consists of urgent and 
pressing requests to his friends to prepare for their end, 
and in expressions of a lively hope of salvation for him- 
self.] 

T remain your most affectionate and beloved son until 
death; so Amen, This from me, James Bird.' 

'November the 9th, 1814.' 

"Soon after the receipt of this letter, there came another 
from an officer en board the squadron stating the execution 
of Bird, on the next day. So perished as brave a soldier as 
belonged to the army." 

A better illustration of the difficulty of unquestionable 
historical accuracy, as well as of the power of a ballad, could 
hardly be found than is given by this wooden piece of verse. 
One turns hither and yon and finds details conflicting in 
suggestion if not in statement. With regard to the often 
used term "The Kingston Volunteers" be it said, in his 
letter to Governor Snyder, printed in the Pennsylvania 
Archives, 2nd series, Vol. 12, p. 545, Captain Samuel 
Thomas offers his command under the name of "Luzerne 
Volunteer Matross", but the letter is dated "Kingston, Tune 
10, 181 2", Kingston, Luzerne county, Penn'a., evidently 
being headquarters. 



74 ( HAELES MINER, 

In the official record in the State Papers, Naval Affairs, 
Bird appears in the list of those severely wounded on the 
Lawrence, as "lame- Bird, Marine," and in the list of those 
receiving a share of "the distribution of prize money on 
Lake Erie" as "James Burd, Private", whose share was 
$214.89, paid on January 10, 1815, to the "Attorney of his 
father." In fact, he was first private and then marine, but 
in both these eases he was marine. 

Perry, in his letter to the Secretary of the Navy, Septem- 
ber 13, 1813, reports "those officers and men who were 
immediately under my observation who evinced the greatest 
gallantry", but among the names does not mention Bird, or, 
indeed, any other "man". A very similar story of several 
nameless wounded men, and of a sick man who refused to 
stay below, is told by Dr. Usher Parsons, the surgeon on the 
Lawrence, who. in various commemorative addresses, does 
not speak of Bird, though one may have been he. 

There is a tradition stated in the text, that may have come 
to Mr. Miner from Bird's family, that he left his post on 
the Niagara, in the hope of rejoining Perry, and so did not 
in intention desert his country; and another that Perry sent 
a reprieve, of which later. 

Again, in a paper entitled "The Battle of Lake Erie in Bal- 
lad and History, by Charles B. Galbreath, published in the 
Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, in 191 1, a 
number of pages are devoted to Bird's history : "presented 
in paraphrase from authentic source-." Here it is stated 
that Bird joined the marines, on the suggestion of an officer, 
to escape punishment for having allowed stores in his keep- 
ing to disappear; that after desertion he was recognized in 
Butler, Pennsylvania, and reported, though it is not said he 
• ted there; that "efforts were made to have Bird's 
sentence commuted to imprisonment, because of his gal- 
lantry in the battle of Lake Lrie, but without success. The 
ident refused to extend clemency to Bird on the groun 1 
that 'bavin- deserted from his post while in charge of a 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 75 

guard, in time of war, he must therefore suffer as an ex- 
ample to others.' " * * * He with two others "were exe- 
cuted on board the Niagara in the road stead at Erie in 
October, 1814, and were buried in the 'sand beach.' " 

The ballad itself is quoted by Mr. Galbreath with only 
some natural verbal changes, and the omission of one stanza. 
The writer, who often heard it sung "to an old church tune", 
tenderly describes the singer and the effect of the ballad : 
"Those who hear with impatience three or four stanzas 
of a song in these days, can hardly believe with what tense 
interest this old ballad was heard to the last word. Tears 
often came into the eyes of the young listeners. * * * This 
event [the battle] was known along the borders of the 
lake, not alone through the valiant deeds of Perry, and the 
far reaching results of his achievement, but even more 
through the tragic fate of one who fought beside him under 
the splintered masts on the slippery deck of the Lawrence. 

"Judged by modern standards, our ancestors of seventy- 
five years ago enjoyed only primitive advantages. * * * 
Many of them knew of the Battle of Lake Erie only through 
the ballad of James Bird. Corn huskings, apple cuttings, 
log rollings, and even quilting bees of the long ago not unf re- 
quently closed with the rendition of the quaint, pathetic 
song, written by a bard unlearned and unknown, but not 
without the gift to tell his story well. Who wrote it is 
not known. [The italics are mine.] As a local historian 
observes, the author was apparently familiar with the true 
story of Bird's home, and he adds : 'That there was wide 
spread sympathy felt for Bird chiefly because of his service 
on the fleet, there can be no doubt. The tenacity with which 
the popularity of the ballad endured is proof of this. It is 
now rare ; rare enough to excuse its appearance as part of 
the history of the region on which it was so long a popular 
feature of nearly every entertainment or public gathering.' " 

On another page Mr. Galbreath says : "Ten years ago he 
who had sung the old song was a little disappointed to read 



-!. CHARLES MINER, 

a paragraph in a paper to the effect that James Bird was a 
myth and the old ballad was fiction with no basis of reality." 

An element of romance is added by "K. T. B.", a corre- 
spondent of the Philadelphia Press, January 13, 181 4, who, 
telling the familiar story of Bird's refusal to go below, adds : 
"For his bravery he was honored and excited the envy of a 
j 1 >ung lieutenant. * * * The war was over, Perry was 
away, and Bird and a young man named Rankin left, it was 
supposed, to join Jackson at New Orleans. They were 
brought back and condemned to be shot. A reprieve was 
sent, two men riding on horseback were seen in the dis- 
tance, waving it, but they were too late. That night the 
lieutenant ordered a guard put in his tent to keep away 
Bird's ghost. The second night he committed suicide." 

Thus, a hundred years after it was written we can see th^ 
Ballad of James Bird going through the process of becom- 
ing a true folk-ballad: "facts" contradict each other; tradi- 
tion developes ; the hero becomes a myth ; jealousy and the 
supernatural are added, and the writer is lost in the mists 
of Time. It seems almost a pity to have done this much 
in the interest of the plain light of truth. 

Mr. Miner's first period of residence in the Wyoming Val- 
was now over, for in 1816 he sold the Gleaner to Isaac A. 
Chapman, and went in June to Philadelphia as editor and 
part owner (with Thomas T. Stiles) of the True American, 
a daily. To his wife, whom, in the uncertainties of his new 
work, he left behind, he wrote: "1 am obliged to be proper 
busy ; the editor of a daily paper has little time to himself." 
In the True American, according to his custom, he started 
a series of moralizing essays, this time entitled "Lectures 
of Father Paul." The Philadelphia experiment was not a 
long-lasting one, though in addition to the True American 
work, he was for a time assistant editor of a Political and 
Commercial Register. The next year, unable to stand the 
city life, he was back with his family in Wilkes-Barre, and 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. JJ 

though soon offered the assistant editorship of the well- 
known United States Gazette, in what he used to call the 
"metropolis," he declined it; in July, 1817, buying the 
Chester and Delaware Federalist, at West Chester, Penn- 
sylvania, to which place he removed his family, and which 
was to be his home for fifteen years. 

Undeterred by the national defeat of his dearly-loved 
political party, for four presidential terms, he hoisted his 
banner as of yore, and in the initial number of his new 
sheet printed a salutatory which left no doubt as to his 
position: "My principles, although somewhat old-fashioned, 
and not the most popular, I am proud to avow. I am a 
Federalist !" 

The early printers, from the days of Gutenberg to those 
of the Franklins, were accustomed to wander from place 
to place in search of business; so that the migrations of 
Charles and Asher Miner, sometimes types and all, were 
not exceptional. The frequent changes of name to which 
they subjected their various papers w r ere also, as has been 
said, in accordance with the fashion of the time, which, 
indeed, continued to the period of the journalistic consolida- 
tions of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Soon, 
the Chester and Delaware Federalist became the Village 
Record, under which title it was for years one of the best- 
known provincial weeklies in the country. Thurlow Weed, 
the veteran editor and influential Xew York politician, wrote 
in the New York Observer in 1882: "The Village Record, 
a weekly paper published and edited fifty years ago by 
Charles Miner, was my model newspaper. The articles en- 
titled 'From the Desk of Poor Robert the Scribe' were gen- 
erally copied and read with interest and instruction by pro- 
fessional men, mechanics, farmers, etc., etc., each and all 
finding much to improve their minds, to regulate their con- 
duct, to soothe their sorrows, to soften their manners and 
to brighten their lives." 

That Mr. Weed, writing so long afterward, should have 



j8 CHARLES MINER, 

put the Poor Robert articles into the / 'illayc Record was 
nut an unnatural slip. Mr. Miner's familiar essays, soon 
Started according to his usual plan were this time called the 
"Juhn Harwood" papers. In other ways, too, the active 
printer sought to raise the intellectual and moral ti 
the community, for in one of his issues he inserted a notice 
of books to lend. 

In all matters of new inventions or interesting discoveries 
Mr. Miner was always a pioneer; thus he was the first in 
his neighborhood to get and use sulphur matches. His 
Franklinian or Jeffersonian interest in all things useful, new 
or old, is taken for granted in the following letter from 
Nicholas Biddle, the famous financier of the United States 
Bank : 

"Andalusia, April 25, 1822. 

"] am going to take a liberty for which I am sure I shall 
find an apology in your desire to diffuse any valuable in- 
formation. 

"A gentleman in Boston has requested me to obtain the 
best information I can procure with regard to the machine 
for mowing invented by one of our citizens in Chester or 
Delaware county, about which he has heard very extraordi- 
nary accounts. The machine is, I presume, that of Mr. 
Bailey ; of this I know nothing except from report ; but Dr. 
Meade tells me that he has seen a certificate in its favor 
signed b) a number of gentlemen, of whom you were one. 
I cannot therefore attain my object better than by asking 
you to have the goodness to let me know your opinion of it 
in detail. I should wish to understand exactly what is the 
size and structure of the machine; its mode of operation; 
whether it really overcomes the great obstacle in all instru- 
ments hitherto used for that purpose; the difficulty of lay- 
ing the swath down so as not to choke the machine; the 
price; the character and occupation of the inventor; and 
how the machine could be obtained. The object is certainly 
one of great interest, and 1 should feel a pride, which I 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. /O, 

know you would share, if our state could present to the 
world an improvement which the genius of Europe has so 
long sought in vain.* 

"Very respect'y and truly yrs. 

"Nicholas Biddli:." 

Mr. Miner had not been in Chester county long before 
he was asked to enter active political life, for which his 
vigorous editorials had shown his fitness; and in 1820 he 
was the Federalist candidate for Congress in the Chester 
and Montgomery district. The candidacy was unsuccess- 
ful, for the rise of the Federalist-National-Republican tide 
was to be postponed for four years ; but he made a good 
showing. By this time, though not now in public life, he had 
become the friend and sometimes the valued confidant of 
men of the largest national prominence. Thus Chief Jus- 
tice Marshall wrote him from Richmond. July II, 1821 : 

"I thank you very sincerely for your politeness and at- 
tention in forwarding to me the Village Record of the nth, 
containing the proceedings of the Washington Association, 
in conjunction with the Washington guards, in West 
Chester on the 4th of July, which I received this morning. 

"Feeling deeply, as every American must, the great event 
commemorated on that day, throughout our nation ; and con- 
sidering the opinions expressed on it, as indicating, in 
no inconsiderable degree the public feeling, I take an inter- 
est in what is said on that great anniversary, and was much 
gratified on reading your toast, and the truly American 
sentiments with which it was so handsomely introduced. 
I was the more gratified with those sentiments because the 
time is arrived, I think, when the good and the wise are 
urged by the strongest motives of genuine patriotism, to 
assuage by lenient application those asperities and jealousies 
between the stites which have been. I believe, excited with- 

*Up to that year, 1822. there had been no practical reaper or 
mower in Great Britain or the United States, the first successful 
machines being Bell's, in Scotland. 1826. and Hussev's, in Obi<->. in 



80 CHARLES MINER, 

out sufficient cause, and which too many are not unwilling 
still farther to irritate; — asperities and jealousies which may 
I to consequences all must deplore, when the time for 
preventing them shall have passed away. 

"I have seen no paper containing the proceedings of the 
4th of July with which I have been so highly pleased as 
with those of the I'illage Record of the nth. Accept my 
thanks for it, and believe me to be with great respect 

"Your obed' Serv't 

"J. Marshall." 

James Buchanan, too, — then a Federalist, — asked his as- 
si stance in following that "middle course" which was to 
characterize the future president to the end of his days: 

"Washington, rst March. 1823. 

"B) this mail 1 take the liberty of sending you the 
National Intelligencer containing the remarks which I made 
on the subject of the tariff. You will perceive that I have 
pursued a middle course, which I believe to be the best 
policy of the country generally and peculiarly adapted to 
the middle states. As this subject will certainly be before 
• longress next winter, and as I believe there can no doubt 
but that some changes will be made in the tariff, 1 wish the 
public in our district to become acquainted with it and ex- 
press their opinion. With this view I would request that 
when you can do it without crowding out more important 
matter, you will either publish the whole or such parts of 
my remark- as will call the attention of the people to the 

si important measure which in all human probability will 
I e lie fore the ne r<<s. I should be pleased to know 

your individual opinions of this and other subjects about 
which I hope ere long to have an opportunity of conversing 
with von. 

"From your friend. 

"Tames Buch <\n \n\" 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 8l 

By 1823 Henry Clay was consulting him in an intimate 
fashion : 

"Ashland, 4th July, 1823. 

"I received your very obliging favor of the 19th ulto. 
and owe you many thanks for the communication which it 
contains, and the kind feelings which dictated them. 

"There is some foundation for most of the precious con- 
fessions made by the leaky supporters of Mr. Calhoun to 
your friend. With respect to the great effort to be made 
to elect that gentleman, the past tense as well as the future 
might have been employed. I am disposed to doubt, for 
the sake of the President himself, his intermeddling in that 
object, otherwise than by promotions of the friends of Sec. 
of War. Mr. Meigs was my friend, and that circum- 
stance may have contributed to his ejection ; I have no 
doubt he will be succeeded by some friend of Mr. Cal- 
houn's whose influence in the affair of appointments evi- 
dently is predominant ; and I think it probable that 
MacLean of Ohio will be appointed. But the election, after 
all, of Mr. Calhoun is almost next to impossible. The very 
means employed to produce it, will, as heretofore, operate 
to his prejudice. Where is the interest to elect him? Give 
him So. Carolina, and yield him also Pennsylvania (con- 
trary to probability), and it is impossible to take him into 
another state. He may everywhere have some warm ad- 
mirers, and a few zealous supporters, but, except in these 
two states, he has no practical interest to be counted upon 
in any other. I do not think it is in the compass of all the 
accidents in the chapter, aided even by intrigue, to secure 
his election. 

"I think the contest at present may be fairly considered 
as confined to them. If New York and Penna. should fail 
to indicate their respective preferences, so long before the 
election, as to operate upon the American public generally, 
the probability is that the election will devolve on the H. of 
R. On the contrary, if New York should declare her choice 



82 .1INKK. 

within the next eight months, by some ambiguous art, the 
result would be as follow s : 

"If that choice should fall on Mr. Crawford, there is an 
end of the Adams pretensions; and the content would then 
be between Mr. Crawford and me. 

"If on Mr. Adams, there would be an end of Mr. Craw- 
ford's pretensions, and the contest would be between Mr. 
Adams and me. 

"If for me. my election would take place by not less than 
two-thirds of the Union. 

"In the first and second suppositions, the contest would 
be somewhat doubtful. Xew England would hold the bal- 
ance between Mr. Crawford and me. I should, I think, 
enter it with a plurality of votes. 

"In the second supposition, much would depend upon 
Pennsylvania, but I think I should get against Mr. Adams 
nearly all south and west of Xew York. Mr. Adams is 
undoubtedly stronger in the west than Mr. Crawford; he 
has everywhere some interest, though not an available inter- 
est, in a contest with me. Mr. Crawford has nowhere, ex- 
cept in East Tennessee, any interest in the tern states. 
In a contest between them I believe Mr. Adams would 
get the western vote with the exception possibly of Ken- 
tucky and Missouri. 

"I write you in confidence and subscribe myself 

"Faithfully your Obliged & Ob. Set-.. 

"H. Clay." 

JnM how Mr. Miner came to be so much of a political 
influence in Washington before he went to Congress it is 
hard to say. Me was a power in the press; through his 
terms in the Pennsylvania Legislature he knew many men 
in public affairs, and had visited Washington several times: 
perhaps it was chiefly through Mr. Claw with whom, des- 
pite their divergent views on many points, he was on cordial 
and social terms before, during, and after his Congressional 
career. But thai he was an influence with others, is shown 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 83 

by a torn piece from an old family friend, Dr. Bradley, who 
writes : 

"28th Feu v., 1824. 
« * * * j f ear there is mischief brewing and you alone 
can prevent it — I do not think it useful to be more explicit 

until I see you. Mr. C. y I am told desires greatly to see 

you here." This is endorsed : "I went and prevented the 
removal of Dr. Bradley, whose place was wanted for Col. 
McKinney. Through Mr. T. Johnson, then chr. com. P. O. 
& R. Roads, Mr. McLean was induced to forbear & Col. 
McK. was immediately given a place in the Dep. of Com. ' 

In 1824, being, by his writings, correspondence, and work 
in the State Assembly, a man of a reputation distinctly 
more than provincial, Charles Miner was elected to Con- 
gress from the districts then comprising Chester, Delaware, 
and Lancaster counties, James Buchanan, still a Federalist, 
being his colleague. A friendly letter from Mr. Buchanan, 
prior to the re-election of both of them two years later, 
shows the beginning of the political cleavage which was to 
make Buchanan a Jacksonian Democrat and a believer in 
the idea that even the discussion of slavery should be pro- 
hibited in Congress : 

"Lancaster, 8 September, 1826. 

"In my opinion there neither is nor will be any foundation 
for the suggestion that Lancaster county should throw you 
off for being a friend of the administration. There is, with- 
out doubt, in the county, a very great majority of both 
parties in favor of the election of Gen. Jackson, but the 
Federalists believe and believe correctly, that they could 
not with propriety oppose the candidate selected for Con- 
gress by the party in Chester county, and thus violate the 
implied faith existing between the two counties, merely 
because he differed from them concerning the comparatiw 
claims of Mr. Adams and Gen. Jackson. They have no 
other objection against you ; on the contrary, they feel 
grateful to you for the able, fair and persevering support 



84 ' HARLES MINER, 

which you have always given to the cause. It is possible, 
nay, probable, that a few of the very warm Jackson men 
hero may not vote for you, as there will be a few very 
warm Adams men who will not vote for me ; but these scat- 
tering votes, if there should be such, will be lost in the gen- 
eral result. Upon the whole I should be disappointed if 
you should not, in this county, run fairly with the Federal 
ticket, and it is the best and most popular ticket which has 
for many years been presented to the party. 

"The Federal candidate for the Assembly from the city 
of Lancaster, Cyrus S. Jacobs, Esq., is the decided friend 
of Mr. Adams, and there was no objection made to settling 
him upon the ticket on that account. I need not tell you 
that you shall have my fair support, and that I will do every- 
thing in my power to prevent any Federalist from striking 
you. if I should hear that such is the intention of any. 

"By the by, some weeks ago, there were one or two Fed- 
eral gentlemen from Salisbury township in Chester 
county. They returned under an impression that your 
friends there would oppose my election. They received this 
impression from some intimations of the kind which they 
heard from persons in West Chester. I will not mention 
the names of the persons, because it could do no good. 1 
feel satisfied that I have prevented any injury which might 
have been occasioned by such a report in that township. 
The name of one gentleman in West Chester was men- 
tioned to me as an enemy to my election, but I did not 
believe it, and therefore will not repeat his name even to 
you. 

"I have imt abandoned the hope of paying you a visit in 
the course of the present or next month. T wish to make 
an excursion to the State of Delaware, and if I should, I 
will pass through West Chester, and return by Chester and 
Col. Wayne's. 

"Tf you should hear an) report that the Federalists in 
any portion of this county intend to strike you. write to me 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 85 

without reserve, and I will immediately inquire into the 
truth of it, and if there should be any foundation for it 1 
shall endeavor to prevent it. 

"From your friend, 

"James Buchanan." 

Mr. Miner's two terms, closed by his own decision not to 
run again, pleasantly coincided with the administration of 
his friend (as he speedily became) John Quincy Adams — 
the four years that constituted the only gleam of light, in 
the Federalist- Whig view, in the four decades of national 
darkness that began with Jefferson and ended with Van 
Buren. Intimate letters from President Adams will later 
be given ; and it is interesting to note that the next Whig 
president, with the exception of the speedily dying 
Harrison, fully agreed with Adams in his estimate of Mr. 
Miner; he was, said John Tyler in 1850, the ablest man he 
had met with from Pennsylvania. 

In 1825, when Mr. Miner took his seat, Asher came to 
West Chester, and, the old-time partnership being resumed, 
the Village Record, during the four years of the junior part- 
ner's absence in Washington, was "edited and published by 
A. & C. Miner." 

Mr. Miner's first motions and speeches in the House of 
Representatives were as they had been in the State Legisla- 
ture, of a practical nature : 

1. Regarding the domestication of the mulberry tree as 
permitting silk-culture in the United States. 

2. Regarding national aid in the construction of the Del- 
aware breakwater. 

As to the first of these measures it must be recalled that 
Mr. Miner* at one time imported mulberry trees and silk- 
worms and had them on his West Chester farm, where their 
uncertain care was something of a trial to the willing but in- 
experienced Mrs. Miner. The children gathered the leaves 

*See letters Jannarv 14, 1826. January 27. 1P-27. and February 11, 
1828. 



86 Ml VRLES MINER, 

to feed the worms, and Mrs. Thomas said they could hear 
the little nibbling sound as the worms ate. An appreciative 
letter from David Trimble, Trimble's Furnace, Ky., says: 
i March 3d, 1828) : "I beg leave to present my best respects 
to you, and to ask the favor of one copy of the printed 
Report — including all the Documents — upon the Subject of 
Silk, Worms, etc. The request is made of you in particular, 
because I wish to have a Copy — as a sort of keepsake — from 
the member who made the first movement on the subject, 
and who is likely to acquire some fame by his foresight in 
the matter." As far back as 1732 the Colonial trustees 
granted lands to Georgia settlers on condition that they 
plant mulberry trees, and raise silk worms. About this 
<aine time South Carolina, and by 1762, at least, Connecti- 
cut, was experimenting with silk culture, and for a time 
these efforts were active in different parts of the country. 
In his brochure on "The Silk Industry in America." in a 
chapter entitled "Workers in Silk Culture from 1825," Dr. 
L. P. Brockett makes no mention of Mr. Miner, but says: 
'Many men of honorable and patriotic characters, who 
honestly believed that by some of the measures proposed, the 
culture and production of silk might become a national in- 
dustry * * * demonstrated their faith by their works. 
\.mong these the Hon. Peter S. Duponceau deserve- 
perhaps the first place * * * by dint of his personal influ- 
ence and at great cost of time and labor Mr. Duponceau 
brought the matter before Congress at several successive 
sessions." 

But in an article on "Silk*' in the American Quarterly 
Review, in December, 1831. it is said: "About the year 
[790, Mr. Aspinwall made some effort to introduce silk- 
culture into the States of New York, Xew Jersey and Penn- 
sylvania. The period which Mr. Aspinwall chose for intro- 
ducing the silk culture among us was not well chosen. Com- 
merce in the North, and culture of cotton in the South en- 
grossed the whole attention of our citizens. Xo more was 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 87 

heard of silk in this country until about the year 1825. 
The cotton trade was declining, silk had everywhere taken 
the place of muslins. The attention of the people of the 
United States was once more drawn toward the silk culture 
as the best and most effectual means of advancing at the 
same time, our agriculture, our manufactures, and our 
commerce, and thus shaking off our too great dependence 
on the manufacturing nations of Europe. On the 29th of 
December, 1825, on the motion of Mr. Miner, a member 
from Pennsylvania, it was resolved by the House of Repre- 
sentatives of the United States, 'that the Committee on 
Agriculture be instructed to inquire whether the culture of 
the mulberry tree and the breeding of silkworms, for the 
purpose of producing silk, be a subject worthy of legislative 
attention, and should they think it to be so, whether any- 
legislative provision were necessary or proper to promote 
the production of silk.' ' On the 2nd of May the committee 
made an elaborate report in which they proceeded to prove 
not only the expediency, but the indispensable necessity of 
encouraging that culture "principally for the reasons of 
the enormous amount of our annual importation of silk 
goods, compared with our exports of bread stuffs." The 
committee called for information, and Secretary Rush, who 
was much interested in the matter, addressed circular letters 
to all interested. On the basis of this investigation a man- 
ual was prepared and presented to the House on February 
11, 1828, of which 6,000 were ordered printed. So that 
it would seem that Mr. Miner was the one to revive interest 
in silk-culture after a lapse of thirty-five years, by bring- 
ing it before the House. President Adams speaks several 
times in his Memoirs of his interest in trying to raise silk- 
worms in the White House gardens. 

In supporting the second of these measures Mr. Miner 
put himself on the federal ground now occupied by all 
parties, and especially by the newer socialistic propagandas, 
but then avoided by the "strict constructionists." "Your 



88 I HARLES MINER. 

imercial cities,'* said he. "belong to the nation, not f .o 
the States where they are located ; and it is for the general 
interest that they should be guarded and protected." The 
bill was at first rejected, then adopted, not without dissent- 
ing votes, but without a division : and Mr. Miner, with 
three members from Philadelphia, was the recipient of a 
vote of thanks from the Philadelphia Chamber of Com- 
merce. 

December 27, 1827, he spoke on the subject of Revolu- 
tionary land-warrants, pleading for means of giving old 
soldiers a knowledge of their claims, and the power to guard 
them against shyster speculators. 

On February 25, 1828. he delivered in the House another 
clear and cogent speech in favor of the constitutional power 
of Congress to make internal improvements, especially in 
the case of canals.* The Georgia legislature had just voted 
that the General Government had no right to exercise any 
power to encourage domestic manufactures or to promote 
internal improvement ; South Carolina, as usual, had done 
the same thing: and the governor of Virginia, in submitting 
to his own legislature the resolutions of the two States, 
had squarely suggested secession, saying that, "in the worst 
state of things * * * the oppressed sections of country afford 
abundant means to the local authorities to secure to them- 
selves, in their intercourse with the world, all the salutary 
independence of nations; to protect themselves, without the 
least hazard, against physical force from every quarter." 

Defending his argument by citations from the reports 
of the Constitutional Convention, the "Federalist," and 
other authorities, Mr. Miner asserted his own belief that 
*'ln peace or war, for commerce and defence, the means of 

*He had already received from the city of New York the gold 
medal struck in honor of the arrival, in 1825, of the "Seneca Chief," 
the first canal-boat from Lake Erie, "and," says Mr. Harvey, Lodge 
No. 61, "Mr. Clay, recognizing at once the abilities and usefulness 
of the member from Pennsylvania * * * looked to him, more 
than to any other member of the House, to carry out his views upon 
the ts of improvement, the tariff, and a United States bank." 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 8q 

rapid transportation are indispensable. The power of regu- 
lating, exclusively, external and internal commerce would 
seem to carry with it the means of facilitating the trans- 
portation of foreign and domestic produce, which is the 
very life of commerce. All commercial nations have con- 
sidered the power important to commerce, and have exer- 
cised it. * * * The right to make internal improvements 
would, therefore, seem naturally to flow from the duty of 
regulating external and internal commerce. But the duty 
of the common defence, the power of making war, carries 
with it, by irresistible necessity, the power of facilitating 
the means of transportation and rapid movements. * * * 
\nd can it be conceived, sir. that this government had the 
power to add an empire to the republic, and that it has 
not the right to make a road to that empire ?" 

The speaker did not live to hear the clamors of some 
parts of the South, after the Civil War, for "the old flag 
and an appropriation," in Petroleum V. Nasby's phrase ; 
nor did he dream, with all his prophetic foresight, that he 
was anticipating the Interstate Commerce Commission or 
the fortified Panama canal of our own day. But in 1859, 
within six years of his death, he picked up this speech, 
re-read it, and wrote on the cover : "The argument is un- 
answerable." 

During his term of office he took part in many other 
debates : on the tariff, the Panama Congress, the Marigny 
D'auterive case : on a proposed amendment to the constitu- 
tion, etc. When a bill for pensioning Revolutionary sol- 
diers was introduced into the House [February 24, 1829], 
he is recorded as enquiring "zvith some anxiety as to the 
probable amount which the bill would withdraw from the 
treasury, and its effect in retarding the discharge of the 
public debt." He was a useful worker on committees, in- 
cluding the one on re-furnishing the White House referred 
to in the account of his trip to Washington twenty years 
earlier ; but far more important than anything else done in 



OX) ( HARLES MINER, 

igress, was his brave, serious and continued effort to 
mitigate the evils attending the sale of slaves in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, and ultimately to abolish slavery therein. 
That he intended to make this his first work is shown by a 
letter from his wife congratulating him on his resolutions in 
favor of sending a delegate to the Panama Congress* called 
by the new Republics of South America. 

"West Chester, February 2, 1826. 

"So the President was pleased to compliment you on you r 
[Panama] speech. It was very appropriate, well-timed. 
The administration is pleased with it and so am I. I was 
afraid you should meddle with the subject of slavery; I 
thought it a dangerous one, but did not wish to discourage 
you, so 1 said nothing about it in my reply to your letter 
in which you mentioned your intention of noticing it." 

Indeed that the Southerners, always on the alert, found 
in this whole subject and in Mr. Miner's Declaration of 
Independence expressions "rights of man/' ''free and 
equal," etc., in his speech a covert allusion to slavery, is 
evidenced by a reply by Mr. Floyd of Virginia, January 
31, 1826: "Is this Congress [Panama] to tell * * * all of 
us from the Southern States, that 'all men are free and 
equal' * * and if you join us to command the emperor 
of Brazil to descend from his throne we shall then turn 
round to you, and say to the United States, 'Every man is 
free, and if you refuse to make them so we will bring seven 
Republics in full march to make them so?'" "Will any 
man pretend such a state of things could exist here?" After 
Mr. Floyd's impassioned speech Mr. Webster rose and said 
"he hoped the House would discuss this subject in a man- 
ner which became the subject." 

In particular fearing the possibility of having to meet a 
delegate from Hayti on an equality, at this congress, and 
in general having learned through the struggle over the 
admission of Missouri, the need of an opportunity to 

♦See letter January 26, 1826. 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 91 

spread their pro-slavery views, the slave-holders used and 
extended this Panama discussion for their own purposes. 
"The slave-holders had registered their claims. This gave 
a permanent meaning to the otherwise absolutely fruitless 
and aimless struggle over the Panama Mission." (Von 
Hoist, Vol. I, P. 433). Mr. Webster supported the presi- 
dent in this matter, and, says Edward Everett, in his 
Memoir of Daniel Webster, p. 76 : "The speech on the 
Panama question was the most considerable effort made by 
Mr. Webster in the nineteenth congress." 

But it was not until the 13th of May, 1826, that Mr. 
Miner felt his knowledge of the situation to be full enough to 
permit him to offer a series of resolutions in favor of doing 
away at once with the slave trade and the gradual aboli- 
tion of slavery in the District of Columbia. The House 
Debates are silent on this subject, as is the National Jour- 
nal in its report of the day's proceedings, but on the 15th it 
has an editorial note saying that Mr. Miner offered reso- 
lutions in favor of changing the population of the district 
in order that a higher white class might come in, and that, 
though the resolutions were denied at this time, it hoped 
Mr. Miner would bring the matter before the House later. 
The National Gazette of Philadelphia of May 16, 1826, ex- 
plained that this "gradual change of population" was to 
be brought about by the gradual abolition of slavery in the 
District, and a few days later the same paper printed the 
text of the resolutions in full. 

As these resolutions are important in Mr. Miner's life 
history as well as in that of the movement and are difficult of 
access to the general reader (Journal of the House, 19th 
Congress, 1st Session, 1825 — 6, p. 559), and are ignored by 
all but one historian, the text is given entire from the 
National Gazette, Philadelphia, Thursday, May 18th, 1826. 
This source is chosen because of correlative matter in the 
same issue. 



92 I HARLES MINER, 

"The following are the resolutions of Mr. Miner respect- 
ing the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, 
which were mentioned on Tuesday in this gazette : 

"Resolved, As the opinion of this House, that it is 
worthy of inquiry, whether the agricultural, commercial. 
and manufacturing interests of the District of Columbia 
would not be promoted by the substitution of a free white 
population, in the place of that portion of a different de- 
scription now existing therein, in as much as it would lead 
to the purchase and cultivation of the waste lands, con- 
verting barren fields into fruitful gardens, promote enter- 
prise, and useful improvements, and greatly enhance the 
value of property in and near the seat of the General Gov- 
ernment. 

"Resolved, That, considering the number of valuable 
lives, and the great interests, concentrated in this District, 
it is worth\ the distinct consideration of Patriots and 
Statesmen, whether those lives and interests ought not to be 
surrounded by a free white population, interested in the 
Government, connecting society throughout all its ramifica- 
tions, and binding it by the sympathies of a common inter- 
est ; substituting, for the present sub-stratum of society, 
a band of freemen, an efficient and patriotic militia, the will- 
ing, prompt and able defenders of their Government and 
country, doing away with the necessity of having here a 
standing military force, so dangerous to liberty, and which 
must, otherwise, be increased with the increasing evil. 

"Resolved, That it is worthy of inquiry, whether the 
domestic slave-trade, as concentrated and carried on from 
this District, not growing out of property owned within 
the District, or connected with the interests of person •= 
here on public service, (the public prisons and persons em- 
ployed therein, being extensively occupied in such traffic) 
be not an evil which requires legislative interposition to 
remedy. 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 93 

"Resolved, That the District of Columbia being placed 
under the exclusive legislation of the Congress of the 
United States, ought to exhibit to the nation and to the 
world, the purest specimen of government, vindicating the 
superior excellence of free institutions — that, as we arc- 
here establishing a city intended as a perpetual capital of a 
great republic, it is due to ourselves and to posterity, that 
the foundations thereof be laid in wisdom, and that no 
fundamental evils in the structure of its policy be permitted 
to take root, which might become inveterate, by time, but 
which a prudent and timely policy may eradicate. 

"Be it therefore Resolved, That the committee on the 
District of Columbia do take the subjects herein referred 
to, into consideration, and, if they shall, after full inquiry, 
be of opinion that the public interests would be promoted 
thereby, report a bill for the gradual abolition of slavery 
in the District of Columbia, and such restrictions upon the 
slave-trade therein as shall be just and proper." 

In the same issue of the National Gazette a letter is quoted 
from a gentleman who was in the House when these resolu- 
tions were offered, telling a friend in Philadelphia about 
them. Their reading, he said, caused great excitement; Mr. 
Miner did not ask to have them considered then, but on 
another day when he would be able to give statements that 
would induce the House to unite with him in opinion — he 
hoped unanimously ; it had been his intention to bring this 
up earlier, but he had been busy collecting facts to sustain 
his proposition. "'Many Southern gentlemen seeming much 
excited it was thought impolitic to bring on the discussion 
* * * and the object of bringing this very delicate, but most 
important subject distinctly before the House and the 
Nation having been effected the House refused to consider 
the resolutions." "Negatived by an apparently large ma- 
jority," says Niles Register, May 20, 1826. 

The House adjourned on the 22nd of May, 1826, and 
needless to say "another day" was not given to Mr. Miner, 



94 ' SABLES MINER, 

hut the subject having heen brought "distinctly he fore the 
House, and the Nation," it was considered so important a 
step in the history of the anti-slavery movement as to call 
forth, before the beginning of the next session, a resolution 
of thanks from the old "New York Society for Promoting 
the Manumission of Slaves," the substance of which was as 
follows : 

"Resolved, That the thanks of the Society be given to 
the Hon. Charles Miner, a member of Congress from Penn- 
sylvania for the resolution brought forward by him at the 
last session of that body, proposing the abolition of slavery 
in the District of Columbia, and for the determination ex- 
pressed by him to renew the application for this purpose at 
the approaching session; and this Society will be much 
gratified to hear that such application is renewed at the 
earliest proper opportunity. 

"In performing the duty assigned them, the committee 
would improve the opportunity afforded to express their 
most fervent hope that the measure you stand pledged to 
the nation to bring forward will be prosecuted with an earn- 
estness of zeal commensurate with its importance. * * * 

"If there be a spot of earth which more than any other on 
this globe should be regarded as the consecrated ground of 
freedom, it is the District of Columbia ; and the existence 
of slavery there, by the permission of our republican con- 
gress, presents an inconsistency too gross for palliation ; and 
rest assured, sir, that the man by whose instrumentality the 
stain of this inconsistency shall be removed, shall, besides 
the high satisfaction arising from the consciousness of 
having discharged a most important duty, receive the thanks 
of his country, and live long in the remembrance of grate- 
ful posterity." 

This tribute was signed by Hiram Ketchum. Thomas 
Hale, William L. Stone, Ira Clizbe, and Goold Brown. 

From the very beginning Congress had been besieged 
with memorials and petitions, the efforts of the Quakers 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 95 

being especially earnest in this line. The extinction of the 
foreign slave-trade, the domestic slave-trade ; the abolition 
of slavery; the betterment of the condition of slaves, etc., 
found their way into the discussions of the House. Even 
John Randolph of Roanoke, as far back as 1816, had moved 
to appoint a committee "to inquire into the existence of a 
inhuman traffic in slaves carried on in and through the 
District of Columbia; and report whether any, and what, 
measures are necessary for the putting a stop to the same." 
Such a committee was duly appointed, with Randolph him- 
self as chairman ; and a subsequent report set forth some 
facts in the case, but recommended no measure for the sup- 
pression, or even the regulation, of the traffic, so the matter 
dropped. Slavery had been hotly denounced on the floor, 
as when, for a single example, Tallmadge of New York, in 
1 819, called it a "monstrous scourge of the human race,"' 
in the exciting debates leading to the Missouri Compromise ; 
but with all this it would seem that only once before had a 
resolution favoring the abolition of slavery, per se, been 
offered to the House. It would be a bold person who 
would state definitely that this is the case, but a diligent 
search back to the first Constitutional Congress has found 
only one earlier series of resolutions offered on the floor of 
the House in favor of the abolition of slavery. On Feb- 
ruary 5, 1820, Mr. Meigs, of New York, submitted resolu- 
tions asking that a committee be appointed to consider set- 
ting aside public lands as a fund, ist, for a naval force to 
annihilate the slave-trade ; 2nd, the emancipation of slaves in 
the United States ; 3rd, colonization of Negroes. It will 
be seen that this went farther in suggesting unlimited aboli- 
tion, but Mr. Miner felt that to be impossible and thought 
that if it could be abolished in the District a lever would 
be furnished with which to accomplish the rest. Mr. Meigs' 
Resolutions died at their birth, but Mr. Miner followed his 
more and more trenchantly to the end of his terms, (p. 188. ) 
In his Memoir, Vol. 4, p. 518. under date February 5. 



96 ' HARLES Ml NEK. 

1820, Mr. Adams say- : "Walking to my office, Mr. Henry 
Meigs, member of the House from New York, told me that 
he had offered this morning several resolutions, with a vievv 
to appropriate the proceeds of the public lands to the eman- 
cipation of the slaves throughout the union. This, I sup- 
e, is to serve him as an apology to his constituents for 
voting against the restriction." 
[In the Missouri debate.] 

The second session of the 19th Congress convened De- 
cember 4, 1826, and doubtless much encouraged by the ap- 
proval of his earlier resolutions Mr. Miner seized the first 
opportunity to speak again on the subject. To his wife he 
wrote December 27, 1826. 

'"Where have you been to-night. Master Charles? You 
shall hear. It is now half-past 9; I have been to Mr. Clay's. 
I did not intend to go, but Mr. Williams came in and per- 
suaded me. The night before I was at Gen. Jessup's ; but 
did not stay long, for I had pressing business at home, a 
debate coming on to-day in which I felt a lively interest. 
It regarded the poor blacks in the District. Col. Ward had 
introduced the proposition, and he came and asked me to 
aid in its passage. The House was in the highest possible 
state of excitement. After some effort I got the floor. 
Fortunately 1 was cool — self-possessed — spoke sad things to 
hear, yet in the mildest and most persuasive manner I pos- 
sibly could. The House listened with all the attention I 
could wish till I had got nearly through. I wandered a 
little on purpose ; there were some things I wished to intro- 
duce, and I took the opportunity to do so, on the subject 
of the enormities of the slave-trade, etc., in the District. 
When I had gol nearly to the end Mr. Brent called me to 
order, not angrily. I do think, pardon me for saying so. 
that from my mild, conciliatory tone and manner, though 1 
^aid most unpleasant things, yet the feelings of irritation 
were soothed. You will see the report in the papers. Mr. 
Reed of Massachusetts took me by the hand and thanked 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 97 

me. Mr. Wright of Ohio told me he was sorry Mr. Brent 
interrupted me, etc. The feeling was certainly favoraMr. 
'So much for so much' as my good father used to say." 

In the course of Mr. Ward's long speech inquiring if 
there was any law authorizing the imprisoning and selling 
free men of color, Mr. Miner introduced this, his second 
annual resolution looking toward the gradual abolition of 
slavery in the District of Columbia. The resolution was 
objected to by the speaker and withdrawn by Mr. Miner but 
later in the day he spoke on the subject, saying: "He rose, 
especially to reply to a remark by several gentlemen, seem- 
ing to imply that this matter ought not to be discussed be- 
cause it created so much excitement and irritation. Such 
certainly was the case, and he regretted that it was so. The 
whole interests of the District are confined to our juris- 
diction. No power but that of the General Government 
could operate here. Slaver)' existed within the District and 
the subject must be regulated by Congress. It was not only 
our right but our duty. It was impossible to do this intelli- 
gently without inquiry and free discussion. This was felt 
to be a subject of delicacy; no one felt it more sensibly 
than himself. It is always painful to excite unpleasant 
feelings ; such was never his wish ; and it was a matter of 
regret with him when, in the performance of duty, such was 
ever the consequence. In his opinion every subject that it 
was our duty to regulate and legislate upon, ought to be 
considered proper to be introduced here and freely dis- 
cussed, without exciting pain or passion. It was in fact 
the case, that owing to the painful excitement growing out 
of any motion on the subject here, it had been utterly ne- 
glected. Gentlemen from neither section of the union like 
to take any step in relation to it. The consequence was there 
had been no amelioration of the laws growing out of the 
system of slavery here, for the thirty years the District 
had been under the jurisdiction of the General Government. 
Tn other States improvements had been made : their codes 



98 I ilARLES MINER, 

had been ameliorated ; here, from the cause alluded to, they 
had been entirely neglected." He then went on to state sad 
facts, and added. "All would go to show that the whole 
subject of slavery within the District needed our interfer- 
ence, and ought to be discussed with freedom and good 
temper." To which it was replied that ii was a "delicate 
subject" " well calculated to produce excitement and alarm 
in the slave-holding states." [Summary in Congressional 
Debates, 1826-27, p. 563.] 

These speeches of Mr. Ward and Mr. Miner had the 
effect of leading the committee to introduce a bill, on Jan- 
uary 11. 1827, to repeal the objectionable laws. The House 
however, refused the bill. 

On Xew Year's day of 1828 Mr. Miner wrote to his 
friend. Jacob Cist, in Wilkes-Barre, who. in addition *o 
many otber gifts was an artist of no mean ability: 

"I am employed in gathering information respecting 
slavery and the slave-trade in this District. It has increased 
more than any other business since you were here, and is 
now carried on at wholesale. Besides hundreds in the 
prisons, brought in and confined here for sale, there are 
houses kept for their reception, where pens are made and 
the southern traders hold their headquarters. Are there any 
facts in your knowledge that would apply to the subject? 
or can you give me information or advice where to apply 
or bow to proceed? It is so long since you were here I can- 
not hope for much, but should like to know whether it 
prevailed when you were here. I have also to beg the favor 
"i you to give me a sketch for engraving of a gang of four- 
teen negroes, men chiefly, one or two women, hand-cuffed, 
and chained together as they iron them here to send them 
off. An ox-chain runs from front to rear in the centre ; then 
the poor wretches are hand-cuffed, right and left hand, to 
this chain in pairs. Perhaps fourteen figures would be too 
many to task you to sketch. I wish also, if you can (how 
much labor is it?' no matter, it is in a holy caused. 1 wish. 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 99 

you would sketch a mother forced from her children — 
turning, wringing her hands, and in despair exclaiming: 
'Oh! my children! my children!' 1 mean to bring the mat- 
ter before Congress, and I wish to be armed at all points for 
offence and defence." It is not known whether or not 
these drawings were made, but on March 24, 1828, he pre- 
sented the "memorial" he was then preparing, which is 
printed in full, "House Document 215," in the "Executive 
Documents." 

This "Memorial of the Inhabitants of the District of 
Columbia, praying for the gradual abolition of Slavery in 
the District of Columbia," was far-reaching in its scope. 
Pointing out the inconsistency between the laws making 
the foreign slave-trade piracy, punishable with death, and 
the District laxity which permitted a possibly free negro 
to be seized, imprisoned, and auctioned off for life for non- 
payment of jail fees, the memorial went on to attack the 
institution of slavery itself, as having "an evident tendency 
to corrupt the morals of the people, and to damp the spirit 
of enterprise by accustoming the rising generation to look 
with contempt upon honest labor, and to depend, for sup- 
port, too much upon the labor of others." It accordingly 
proposed laws "to prevent slaves from being removed into 
this District, or brought in for sale, hire, or transportation ; 
without, however, preventing members of Congress, resi- 
dent strangers, or travellers from bringing and taking away 
with them their domestic servants;" the repeal of laws 
authorizing the selling of supposed runaways for their prison 
fees or maintenance: and a system of gradual emancipa- 
tion whereby "all children of slaves born in the District of 
Columbia after the fourth day of July, eighteen hundred 
and twenty-eight, shall be free at the age of twenty-five 
years." Slavery had been or was gradually being abolished 
in the Northern States. Many States had done much for 
the betterment of their slaves ; his own State with its oldest 
society for abolition in the country, was behind him in this 



IOO I HARLES MINER, 

special effort ; many petitions from various sources had been 
sent to Congress, and he had been the medium through 
which some had been presented ; but the present petition — 
one of the signers being Chief Justice Cranch of the Dis- 
trict, father of the poet — was especially important being 
"sustained by sixteen slave-holders in the District and more 
than one thousand property-holders in the District." Be- 
sides this petition was his own : the work of his own brain, 
hand and heart, and the hard work he put on it, gathering 
facts and securing signatures, caused it to stand out particu- 
larly in his later memory. A little before the presentation of 
this petition a constituent in West Chester wrote urging 
him to be more cautious : "You must be a Colonization man 
and vou must not push that Abolition of slavery in the 
District too hard — the rusty old gun will kick most con- 
foundedly — this is not the time — wait a little — let us get 
more friends in the South and West — and let us deserve 
their friendship and confidence by a cordial co-operation in 
their Colonization plan." But letters like this did not dis- 
courage him in the least. 

His final effort, into which he threw himself with all his 
powers, was the introduction on January 6, 1829. of his 
preamble and resolution, directing the committee on the 
District to inquire into the slave-trade in the District, and 
closing : "That the committee be further instructed to in- 
quire into the expediency of providing by law for the grad- 
ual abolition of slavery within the District, in such manner 
that the interests of no individual shall be injured thereby." 
In offering it he represented not only his own opinion but 
that of bis State; for the Pennsylvania Houseof Representa- 
tives had, at its previous session, almost unanimously ex- 
pressed its opinion that slavery in the District ought to be 
abolished, "in such manner as they [Congress] may consider 
consistent with the rights of individuals and the Constitu- 
tion of the United States." As was his wont he prepared 
himself with the greatest care for this speech. Tt was his 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. IOI 

custom all through his residence in Washington to visit the 
prisons and the auction sales ; to know all that could be 
known of the private "dens" where kidnapped free negroes 
were packed as closely as possible ; to learn all he could 
by private conversation with keepers ; and in every way to 
be sure, especially when approaching a speech, that his in- 
formation was full and accurate. On the 7th of January, 
the day after the introduction of the resolutions, he sup- 
ported them by his speech. Naturally the atrocities cited 
and the arguments offered were largely the same as in 
previous speeches. Having set forth the constitutional right 
(and duty) of Congress to correct abuses in the District; 
— "If evils exist we alone can remedy them. If injustice 
and oppression prevail we alone are responsible" — he went 
on to marshal his army of facts. He had papers furnished 
him by keepers of jails showing the hundreds of negroes 
who were yearly imprisoned on the plea of debt, or for no 
cause ; he drew the distressing pictures that later became so 
familiar of negroes ruined for life by the dampness, black- 
ness and vermin of their cells ; of the separations of fam- 
ilies, the chain-gangs, etc. 

He suggested what must be the feelings of a foreigner 
who should come with "anxious pleasure" to the "ten miles 
square, where the united wisdom and unrestricted power of 
the nation operate. * * * And what objects are presented to his 
view? At one market he meets a crowd, and as he passes 
near, behold it is a constable exhibiting a woman for sale 
subjected to the scoff's and jeers of the unfeeling! He is 
selling her for a petty debt, under the authority of the sanc- 
tion of Congress ! Well may he exclaim 'The age of chivalry 
is gone forever'! To remove the painful impression, he 
takes up a newspaper and reads : 'Cash in the market and 
the highest price for men and women.' He walks abroad, 
sees a gang of slaves hand-cuffed together, a long chain 
running between them connecting the whole : miserable 
objects of horror and despair, marching off under the com- 



I HARLES MIXER, 

mand of the slave-traders." While the States from which 
the District had been set apart had been bettering the condi- 
tion of their slaves Congress had failed to keep pace with 
them : "This District ought to be the best governed in the 
Universe. It is absolutely the worst." He urged that 
"nothing can contribute more to the insecurity of propertv. 
than instances of cruelty, shocking to the moral sense pub- 
licly exhibited ; that the South are therefore interested to 
put a stop to the slave-trade here." He charged that "offi- 
cers of the Federal Government had been employed and 
had derived profit from carrying on this trade," and so on 
through the whole sad gamut. Then, as in the earlier 
speeches, in the hope of avoiding rupture, he went on to 
propose indemnity: "1 would not," said he, "be rash; I 
would propose no sudden disruption of existing interests; 
I am no friend to sudden revolutions ; what I would pro- 
pose would be that measures should be advanced to effect 
the abolition of slavery here gradually. The slave-trade, 
and the public sale of men and women, I would instantly 
interdict. Provision ought to be made that no person should 
be injured in his interests to the least amount. Should 
any such case occur, ample indemnity should be given. Ten 
years is much in a man's life, yet it is a brief space in the 
life of a city. The change ought to be so gradual that it 
should only be felt and known by the blessings and pros- 
perity it would shed abroad over the whole District. By a 
law that should protect the District from being overrun by 
free negroes, which should exclude the further introduction 
of slaves to reside here permanently, and which should 
provide that persons born after a certain period to be fixed 
upon, should be free, with other salutary regulations, this 
■ K^raded caste would gradually disappear, like darkness 
before the opening day." 

The principal reply to Mr. Miner was made by Mr. 
Weems, of Maryland, who, like his predecessor in the de- 
bate, was serving his last term as representative. It relied 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. IO3 

largely upon the "Cursed be Canaan" argument ; and as- 
serted that legislation on moral subjects tended to set up 
"the edicts of an ecclesiastical hierarchy." He stated that 
every master loved good slaves, but called the men of color 
on sale in Washington at once "worse than wild beasts" and 
"the most sprightly fellows." His neatest hit was "an awful 
inquiry, to be found in the sacred volume of truth * * * 
'who art thou, oh, vain man, that condemneth another man's 
servant ; before his own master he standeth or falleth.' ' 
Mr. Miner having accepted an amendment with the modi- 
fied expression "it is alleged that," etc. the preamble was 
nevertheless rejected (January 9), yeas $7, nays 141; but 
the resolution directing inquiry into the slave-trade was 
adopted, 120 to 59; and that regarding the expediency of 
gradual abolition was also adopted, 114 to 66. Notwith- 
standing this two-to-one vote, the slave-holding speaker, 
Stevenson, says Henry Wilson, in his "Rise and Fall of the 
Slave Power in America," "so constituted the committee 
that no further action was taken on the subject." Wilson 
characterizes the speech as "earnest and effective ;" but fam- 
ily tradition, often voiced by his daughter, Mrs. Thomas, 
gives it greater praise from a higher source, for she re- 
membered that after the speech Daniel Webster, despite 
his general views, put his arm over his shoulder and ex- 
claimed: "Mr. Miner, you have lighted a torch that will 
set fire to the whole country." Mrs. Thomas also remem- 
bered that his family were very anxious for his personal 
safety. Naturally he was delighted at his success, and im- 
mediately scribbled a little letter to Mrs. Miner : "My reso- 
lutions have occupied the chief part of the day. The reso- 
lutions were both adopted by large majorities; the pre- 
amble, as I expected, rejected. I am, so far as I can be, 
away from you, the happiest dog in Christendom." To 
a relative he wrote next day : "I have been so busy the 
ten days past I have neglected everything but my slave 
resolutions." 



104 CHARLES MINER, 

On a stray Leaf that seems not to be from the Autobi- 
ography Mr. Miner begins an account of the passing of 
these resolutions, and their reception : "It should be ob- 
served that Resolutions similar in purpose had been intro- 
duced so early as 1825 [this must be a slip for 1826, for 
none such can be found in 1825 J, and again at a later period 
but aware of its importance I thought it decorous and 
proper — just to the people of the District, indeed to the 
whole country not to press the matter to a hasty decision. 
The House acted on it after full deliberation, and as will 
be seen, with the hearty acquiescence of those most inti- 
mately concerned — the People of the District themselves. 
This has been so entirely misrepresented by the slave- 
traders, an active, fearless and influential class, * * * and 
misunderstood by large numbers of truth-seeking citizens, 
that a more full exposition of the matter is evidently de- 
manded. * * * 

"It will be noted that introduced on the 6th, they were not 
finally disposed of till the 9th, allowing ample time for de- 
liberation. The majorities were increased (I think) by ten 
or twelve members from slave-holding states." Then follows 
the only apparent bitterness in any record : 

"But it is painful to add that the Hon. John Beli 
though fully apprised (as the documents now adduced will 
show) of the earnest wishes of the people of the District. 
and of the deep enormity and cruelty, and shameful pub- 
licity of the slave auction on Pennsylvania Avenue, and the 
numerous [illegible] in different quarters, yet he recorded 
his vote, each and every time, against the proposed meas- 
ure. 

"What seems irreconcileable with any idea of justice and 
liberality is his vote against the first resolution to enquire 
into the laws within the District in respect to slavery and 
the slave-trade. 

"The refusal even to permit an inquiry was the more 
extraordinary, as the Grand Jury had presented the slave 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. IO5 

trade as an insufferable nuisance. And more than a thou- 
sand of the intelligent, opulent, business men (a majority 
of them it is presumed slave-holders) had the preceding 
year presented a petition expressing their wishes on the 
subject, which was then before the House and Mr. Bell. 
Its vast importance will more than counterbalance objec- 
tion to its length. It shows the Popular Sovereignty opinion 
of the inhabitants — it refutes the slander that the free 
States interf erred against the wishes of the People. It 
exhibits the recorded opinion — feelings and doctrines of the 
Hon. John Bell." 

Anti-slavery opinion outside of Washington promptly 
recognized the service he had done ; thus William Rawle, 
S. Dist. Col., wrote from Philadelphia, January 14, 1829: 

"Permit me to express the great pleasure I feel at your 
efforts in respect to the disgraceful continunace of slavery 
in the District of Columbia having so far succeeded as to 
go to a committee. It will, I hope, prove an entering wedge 
on this important subject; and if nothing effectual should 
be done during the present session it will be at least laying 
a foundation which your successors will not, I hope, lose 
sight of. I could have wished you to have received more 
support from your colleagues, but the honor to yourself 
is greater by standing so much alone." (See p. 184.) 

At that time anti-slavery opinion in Philadelphia and 
New York rather looked toward purchase, colonization, and 
milder measures of removing the evil ; while in Massachu- 
setts, Vermont, and Maryland just a little later, the young 
Garrison was beginning to write newspaper articles advo- 
cating speedier or more violent measures of emancipation. 
In passing it may be said that the writer has read a private 
letter by Mr. Garrison (years since but the memory is vivid) 
speaking coolly of Mr. Miner and his hope of gradual eman- 
cipation, as too moderate — as it naturally would seem to the 
radical — but let it be remembered that in his first anti- 
slavery address in Boston, July 4th, 1829, after all Mr. 



I06 < HARLES MINER, 

Miner's work was done in the House. Mr. Garrison said 
(Old South Leaflets p. yj : "The emancipation of all the 
slaves of this generation is most assuredly out of the ques- 
tion. The fabric, which now towers above the Alps, must 
be taken away brick by brick, and foot by foot, till it is 
reduced so low that it may be overturned without burying 
the nation in its ruin. Years may elapse before the com- 
pletion of the achievement ; generations of blacks may go 
down to the grave," etc. 

J i may be doubted, however, whether any reformer in 
the twenties was doing more good, or spreading a wider 
influence, than Charles Miner. Never a radical regarding 
immediate measures, but never yielding in his general hos- 
tility to slavery, he proceeded along those conservative but 
finally irresistible lines which, thirty-three years later, were 
followed by Abraham Lincoln, who it is well known, at the 
end of the war. seriously contemplated that other plan of 
Mr. Miner's which the radicals despised — remuneration. 
"He [Lincoln] went on to say that he would be willing to 
be taxed to remunerate the southern people for their slaves 
* * * he should be in favor, individually, of the govern- 
ment's paying a fair indemnity for loss of the owners." 
Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. 5, p. 71. 

During his congressional career Mr. Miner sent to his 
wife — who, as their financial circumstances were narrow. 
remained with the children in West Chester — a series of 
letters which give bits of the panorama of Washington life 
through the period of one administration; glimpses of the 
personal and social features of a capital which in some way- 
was on a level with the best Luropean courts and in some 
rather in the rough, notwithstanding the proper aristocracv 
of President Adams, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and 
others, and also offer nearly the best picture of his own 
happy, optimistic, loving nature, almost boyish in its enthus- 
iasms and its naive vanity, and at the same time broad, far- 
sighted and serious in its aims. Lxtracts from them may be 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. IO/ 

given in chronological order, with such notes as will make 
clear the puhlic allusions. 

[December 6, 1825. J 

"Mr. Webster came to me to-day to challenge me as a 
New England man. 1 told him that my heart was all 
Pennsylvania!! ; but yet I loved the place of my birth. Mr. 
Everett does not look the least as I expected ; he sits with a 
modest downcast eye, and you would not suppose he ever 
spoke above his breath in his life." 

[December 17, 1825.] 

"I suppose the President was not displeased with my 
frank, unceremonious, but awkward introduction, as he has 
sent me one of the earliest invitations to visit him ; but I 
suppose that was mere chance. He gives all the members 
dinners ; it is a matter of mere ceremony without any heart 
in it." In his Memoir, Vol. 7, p. 74, date December 8, 1825, 
Mr. Adams says : 

"I had a continual succession of visitors. 48 members 
of the House and 4 Senators. Mr. Miner of Pennsylvania 
came and introduced himself, but stayed not more than five 
minutes." 

[December 21, 1825.] 

"According to invitation 1 dined [torn] with the Presi- 
dent. I understand it is [torn] to be invited before the 
Holy-days, so [torn] said he had refused to [torn] Mr. 
Munroe because he was invited after them. * * * Mr. 
Adams stood in a circle of gentlemen, met us, shook 
hands and led us in to Mrs. Adams, who sat at the dot, 
[Mr. Miner often accompanied his descriptions by plans or 
pictures] nearest the fire; the other dots represent other 
ladies, to whom there was no formal introduction. Mr. 
Adams presently came up and chatted a few minutes. I 
asked after his father, speaking of his faculties. I told 
him I hoped he retained his hearing well ; he understood my 



108 CHARLES MINES, 

allusion and [quoted fromj 'Tristram Shandy.' * * * Din- 
ner was now announced. * * * Mr. Clay early caught my 
eye and asked me to take wine with him; that seemed 1:0 
be the fashion. Gen. Van Rensselaer did so, and so did 
another. In my turn I challenged Mr. Cook, and after- 
wards Mr. McDuffy. On each plate was a napkin, I need 
not say of the finest and whitest, in which was wrapped up 
a little loaf of bread. In the middle of the table, as you 
see represented, was a — I know not its name — like a large 
tea-tray, or waiter ; it must be fourteen feet long, of bronze, 
the bottom of silver, bright as possible, highly wrought 
and beautifully ornamented. At intervals of every two 
feet rose on the verge a female figure about eight inches 
in height, of line attitude and proportion, holding in each 
hand a candle, which made twenty-eight candles around the 
edge. In the inside were four groups of figures, a foot 
in height, of elegant forms, attitudes and proportions, and 
a fifth in the centre. * * * Each hoop held on the heads 
a basket of artificial flowers (I can't draw). The centre 
was a large golden vase, held up by dancing Bacchants filled 
with wine and grapes and flowers. It was very classical, 
and the most splendid thing I ever saw. It belongs to us 
the people, and must have cost many thousand dollars.'" 

[This elaborate structure has come down to our own day. 
In response to a query as to its survival, Mrs. William H. 
Taft kindly wrote to Mrs. Richardson, May 16, 1913: 

"When 1 was in the White House I used for state dinners 
a decoration which has come down from Monroe's time. He 
got it in Paris, and there is a full account of it in the "His- 
tory of the White House" in two volumes. It has gone out 
of print now. That, 1 think, was the decoration that your 
grandfather spoke about. * * * The decoration is twelve 
or fourteen feet long. The candlesticks, four, with 
brandies for twelve candles, and fruit dishes with figures on 
them, make a fine addition to the set; and probably in your 
grandfather's time they used the candlesticks round the 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. ICK) 

edge. True, it is gold now, but perhaps it was formerly 
bronze and silver. At any rate, Monroe got it for the 
White House, and it was undoubtedly that decoration. Mrs. 
Draper, who lives in Washington, has the same decoration, 
which her father, General Preston, left her. He was min- 
ister to Spain, and he got the decoration in Paris, the same 
as Monroe did, and T think they are the work of some noted 
decorator."] 

"From the ceiling hung chandeliers full of lamps. A ham 
that stood before Mr. McDuffy was not skinned, but the 
skin cut in figures, part only being taken off. * * * We 
had many things which from the cooking 1 could 
not judge what they were, but we had birds, 
venison, hams, chicken-pie, canvas-back ducks, soup 
at first, of course, the canvas-backs the last of meats. 
Then came ice cream, pineapples, oranges, apples, grapes, 
raisins, olives, and golden-bladed knives with pearl handles 
to help eat them with. After perhaps an hour the gentle- 
men rose, and the ladies left the table. This brought Mr. 
McDuffy next to me and we fell into chat ; we sat perhaps 
a quarter of an hour when we all rose and went into the 
drawing room." * * * 

[January 14, 1826.] 

"My trifling silk resolution brings me abundance of let- 
ters, notices, and communications. It takes exceeding well. 
1 think it proper ; but it is still a trifle. * * * Did I tell you 
Gov. Cass was added to our mess ? A very pleasant man ; 
full of sprightliness and intelligence. * * * Yesterdav I 
dined with Mr. Buchanan ; he had delivered a great speech, 
really a great one,* and is not very well, so I went to dine 
with him. He feels the force of it and well he may. He 
made this remarks : That House is no respecter of persons ; 
it exalts the humble and abases the proud' — that is every 
bill must stand on its own bottom." 

*On the Judiciary system, January 14. rS26. 



110 CHARLES MIXER, 

[January 26, 1826.]* 

"To-morrow's Intelligencer will bring you my speech and 
proposition, on a most important subject. I was, in speak- 
ing, very much embarassed, but, my friends assure me, not 
so much so but that 1 was perfectly understood. They tell 
me my voice fills the hall entirely, which is something here. 
1 produced a stir among the colts. Mr. Forsyth rose after 
me and spoke some time. Col. Trimble has just been in my 
room ; he had been in before to tell me that I must speak 
on a resolution that will be called up to-morrow, calling 
fur papers relative to the Panama Mission. He assures 
me my resolution was well timed, and the Administration 
will be obliged to me. I can't be more particular now. 
Though nothing to boast of as to manner, you need not be 
ashamed of your Charles, whose special pride would be to 
deserve your praise and love, dear Letitia." 

And two days later: 

"I am called by name might} familiarly by dozens since 
Thursday, who did not know me before. But this is to 
yourself, 1 charge you, when I venture to be a little vain, 
a very little for I have very little reason, it is not what I 
have done, but that I have broken in on the House. You 
must not expose me. The highest wish I have is that 1 
may make myself worthy of your love. * * * I am indus- 
trious still; when well am up an hour before day — I begin 
to hope not without some utility. The thing is whispered 
about and I get credit for my industry if not the fruits of 
it. Mr. Everett and myself, though not very intimate are 
becoming very sociable. He told me to-day that two or 
three times he had almost taken the floor, but did not. The 
truth is the greatest and strongest man is awed here. The 
man without sensibility is awed nowhere. And though I 
tumbled heels over head on the floor to force myself there 

♦Evidently this is a slip for January ^5, as the National Iittclli- 
gencer, of January 26, [826, records: "The subject of the Panama 
Mission has. it will in- seen, been introduced into the House of 
Representatives by Mr. Miner of Pennsylvania." 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. I I 1 

I would not be placed back again where I was last Monday 
for the best cause in Christendom, or the best 1,000 pounds, 
as you please. I yesterday spoke again a few words, called 
for by the occasion, pretty well and without much embarass- 
ment. So we go." 

[January 28, 1826] Second letter. 

"I have been to the French Minister's party. Gen. Met- 
calf and myself set out in a carriage at 8. The fog was so 
dense the driver got lost ; it was very strange ; one or two 
coaches were upset ; and some quite lost. At last we ar- 
rived, the doorway was crammed with carriages. We left 
our cloaks and hats in the entry. Well, this is the house 
[plan] : 4 is the entry where we left our cloaks; we turned 
to the left into No. 2, where were ladies and gentlemen, 
and we were introduced to the Baron Montreuil — you have 
the card I believe. The little figures thus ; in the room 
was a mirror — like a door reaching from the floor, and 
many thought it was a door into another room. In No. 3 
was a crowd so closely packed it seemed impossible to 
move, and yet two sets of cotillions were dancing. A few- 
sat down on the outside, but four-fifths stood up. In the 
recess, No. 5, sat the musicians. After cotillions came 
waltzes, very sprightly, but I do not think modest, then 
cotillions again. Servants dressed in black carried around 
refreshments constantly, consisting of wine, punch, choco- 
late, cakes, figs, raisins, and beans, I believe, and ice-cream. 
I was introduced to Gen. Smith of Baltimore ; talked with 
Gen. Harrison about minuets and ladies' hoops ; you 
elbowed a general or a count — or a minister, or a great 
lady every step you took ; but they were not near so hand- 
some, nor better dancers, nor more easy nor graceful than 
our Chester County ladies. The rooms were well, but not 
very richly furnished. Over the doorlike mirror in room 
No. 2 was a beautiful picture of the late King of France. 
On the mantel, as an ornament, was a clock, with a bronze 
figure leaning over it. in a graceful attitude, on each side 



II- ( BARLES MINER, 

a female bronze figure about two feet high, the hands to a 
basket on the head, the basket was a candlestick. No. 2, 
the dancing-room, was lighted by elegant chandeliers. In 
No. 4 were four parties playing, three at cards, one at chess; 
among those at card- was the British Minister. The Brit- 
ish secretary of legation, who has just arrived, was there. 
He wore mustaches th.it is his upper lip was not shaved 
and the beard was an inch long and looked singular. He 
is near-sighted and used his eye-glass constantly as the 
parties danced. I have only room to tell you. and I do it 
in the strictest confidence — not even Ann is to know it, 
nobody but Sarah — that a member came to me to-night who 
had been at the President's, who said: 'The resolution of 
Air. Miner was proper and well timed.' The Administra- 
tion were pleased and the accompanying remarks were no 
less appropriate. There, hussy !" 

To which she replies: "I must not be called hussy, it 
sound too Swift-ish, and you know I do not like him, you 
may call me goose-cap. madam impudence, or anything 
but hussy." 

I February 1, 1826.] 

"I am this day 46. My life has been full of events. From 
a poor boy, a wanderer in the Susquehannah wilds, I for- 
tunately found my way to your arms (I wish I was there 
now), and step by step to this position — no mean position — 
to the honored councils of my country. I have had many 
trials, but a thousand blessings have been showered upon 
me. E desire to be humble and grateful. * * * T would 
give half the world to spend a couple of days, dear Lete. 
with you. Write to me; tell me you love me; and when 1 
come home and go t<> work, and give up public life, you will 
still love me, and then I shall be happv." 
[February 13, 1826.] 

"Gov. Cass has gone ; we were all sorry to lose him. He 
is below the middle height, thick-set, full round face, with 
an agreeable expression of countenance. On his upper lip. 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. I I 3 

on the left side, a mole. Bald head, but the hair behind 
gathered into a roll, and brought forward so that at first it 
would not be discerned. A fine scholar, writes well, ex- 
tremely pleasant in conversation. * * * I have dropped 
my watch and injured it. Did I tell you before? I could 
cry. It was the prettiest thing I ever had. It seemed as if, 
in the night, I touched the spring it could talk to me. It 
kept excellent time, and intimate as we were together there 
is not one in the mess who knew it was a repeater. I men- 
tion this because you and father would think that I should 
be like William, delighted to let everybody know what a 
pretty plaything I have." 

[February 15, 1826.] 

"You will see the debates on Mr. Miner's resolution, 
calling for information. At least you will perceive that I 
touched no idle string. I don't know what I may make yet, 
but begin to have hopes of myself. I have made no great 
figure here; not so much by half in the House as in the 
newspapers ; but so far * * * I would not change situations 
with any new member of the whole 85 who has come here, 
and that is saying something — even though they should 
give me all their wealth to boot — unless it were for giving 
the money to you, deary. But this is for yourself alone. 
* * * The debate of day before yesterday, is thought, on 
my part to have been direct and pointed, except the geese 
that lay golden eggs, and that was thrown in on a full de- 
liberation and has done me some service."* 
[February 25, 1826.] 

"I have received a complimentary letter from New Eng- 
land with ten skeins of beautiful sewing silk of different 

*On February 13, 1826, Mr. Miner asked for information as to 
tonnage, etc., in Delaware Bay, in order that the House might be 
in a position to discuss wisely the need of a breakwater. In reply 
to a question from Mr. Webster as to whether Mr. Miner desired 
this simply because it would be locally helpful to Pennsylvania, Mr. 
Miner formulated his guiding principle in all such matters: that in 
the House nothing should be promoted for local reasons, only, but 
for the good of the whole country. His bill was adopted February 
16, 1826. 



I 14 CHARLES MINER, 

and most elegant colours. I have shown them to many 
members, and shall send them to Mrs. Adams to examine. 
Inless the General's lady beg.- them. 1 mean to keep them 
to send to one I love better than any general's lady in 
( "hristendom." 

I March II, 1826.] 

"Asher will show you my letter, or tell you of Professor 
Everett's great display.* It was not the weight of argu- 
ment so much as the astonishing, overwhelming outpouring 
of a torrent of eloquence. Every word was made to weigh 
as much as ten from an ordinary man. Ah, it was sur- 
prising and delightful — except his. I had almost said foolish 
confession of faith respecting slavery and in favor of it. 
Oh, that he might be made to feel the impolicy and impro- 
priety of it!" 

Mr. Mitchell of Tennessee, and John Randolph of Vir- 
ginia, both slave-holders, objected, with others, to Mr. Ever- 
ett's statements with regard to slavery in this speech. 
I March 15, 1826.] 

"Well, haven't 1 told you where 1 dined? You shall 
know. Mr. Webster came as unexpectedly as anything 
possibly could be, and gave me one of those frank and 
hearty invitations to dine with him and Mr-. Webster, 
that \\a> worth a thousand billets. 1 went ; met a few- 
Boston friends of Mr. W.'s ; was of course treated with 
cordiality — taken after dinner to the library, and some con- 
fidential conversation passed. I suppose you know what 
an eminent man he is. 

"Since Mr. Everett delivered his great speech. 1 have not 
spoken to him till to-day, though we sit near. We met on 
committee, and after adjourning and the rest went out. he 
chid me for not speaking, and said he was afraid I was 
offended at his declaration in favor of slavery. 1 told him 
with perfect candor and truth my impressions that his 
first position was erroneous; that it was felt to be so by all 

'Mr. Everett's speech in tin- lebate "ii tin- Constitution, March o, 
1826. 



A PENNSYLVANIA LMONKKR. I 15 

the House ; that some began to look down, some to read 
their letters and papers; that when he came to declare his 
sentiments on the subject of slavery, it was like pouring 
cold water down our backs ; that it was liable to misappre- 
hension, though sincere, for just then the Senate were de- 
laying to confirm the nomination of Mr. Sergeant on ac- 
count of his opposition to slavery, and it would look ( and 
be so ascribed) like a sacrifice to the southern opinion to 
pave the way for an easy confirmation of himself should 
he be nominated. With regard to the first position, he told 
me he had submitted it to Mr. Webster and he had ap- 
proved, etc. I told him Mr. Webster was wrong with 
respect to slavery.* He said he had consulted [illegible] 
on that subject, fearing it would bear the look I suggested, 
who told him it would not. I bade him prepare himself 
for a fiery ordeal, for he would have to pass through one; 
but I gave him due praise for his succeeding effort. You 
see the consultation was free and confidential, and I wish 
no one to see this part but Asher and Dr. Thomas. t I am 

*The conservative attitude of Webster, Everett, George Ticknor, 
and others of the inner circle of aristocratic "Webster Whigs" in 
Boston, for many years, is well known. Two months later than this 
— March o, 1826— Air. Everett said : "The great relation of servi- 
tude, in some form or other, with greater or less departure from 
the theoretic equality of men, is inseparable from our nature. 
Domestic slavery is not, in my judgment, to be set down as an 
immoral and irreligious relation. It is a condition of life, as well 
as any other, to be justified by morality, religion, and international 
law." When governor of Massachusetts, in 1836, he intimated in a 
message to the legislature that abolition newspapers and societies 
in that State might be made subjects of local prosecution : "What- 
ever by direct and necessary operation is calculated to excite an 
insurrection among the slaves has been held by highly respectable 
authority an offense against the peace of the Commonwealth, which 
may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common law." 

fAsher was, of course, his brother and partner, then living in 
West Chester. Dr. Thomas, sometimes called "the Doctor" in these 
letters, was Mr. Miner's son-in-law, Isaac Thomas, an honored 
physician in West Chester, who had married his oldest daughter, 
Ann Charlton. "Joseph," to whom confidential communications 
were also sometimes sent, was another son-in-law, Joseph John 
Lewis, long afterwards Lincoln's Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 
who had married Air. Aliner's third daughter, Alarv Sinton. 



! If/ < BAKLES MINER, 

invited to the Dutch Minister's to a party, day after to- 
morrow evening ; shall I go ? I have kept away from 
parties for a good while, being much engaged in business, 
laborious and requiring careful investigation ; but making 
no show on committee. I do not know of anything else 
that would please you; if I did I would say it. Cherish 
kind feelings for me ; we have had many, many happy days 
together; I do not know that life could have gone more 
smoothly, considering we have always been poor, and the 
vicissitudes of sickness will inevitably occur. I think as 
now I grow an old fellow, 46 last month, of your song we'll 
'sleep thegither at the foot.' But you are young, I see you 
as you were at nineteen, and love and respect, and sincerely 
regard you for your mind, which is kind, and pure, and 
intelligent ; and 1 feel, as I think I ought to feel, thai i:i 
sickness it would be the greatest relief to have you near 
except that it would give you pain ; and that in health and 
prosperity- and joy, if such should be our lot. it would all 
be doubled by laying my cheek to yours and having you 
kiss me and say — Well, this is pleasant !" 

I March 29, 1826.] 

"I wrote yesterday, and I thought I would write a long 
one to-day, but don't feel a bit in the humor. I feel as if 
there was a ton weight off my mind. My speech, they tell 
me. must also be printed in pamphlet form. Gen. Van 
Renssellaer has been to me and wants a parcel. Gen. Mc- 
Keen wants some ; Mr. Webster says it must be carefully 
reported and sent out. Mr. Hopkinson, the great lawyer, is 
here. He came to me and got me by the hand and thanked 
me for my speech ; agreed with me in principle, etc. 1 am 
as vain as Ellen with a new lace. I am glad I did not 
know he was in the House, yet I am glad, as it happened. 
that he was.* 

Mr. Miner spoke on February 24, 1826, and again on 
March 28, 1826, on the conservative side in the debate on 



*Scc letter of May ,}. : 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 11/ 

amending the constitution with regard to the election of 
president and vice-president. The closing words of the 
second speech commend themselves to constitutionalists in 
191 5. "To change, to change, to change is the highway to 
disorder in private affairs, and to anarchy in public, and 
anarchy is the broad road to despotism." He shortly after 
received the following leter of congratulation from De Witt 
Clinton : 

"Albany, 19th April, 1826. 

"I am much indebted to you for your excellent speech. 
As far back as 1802, I proposed an amendment to the Con- 
stitution for the establishment of electoral districts and am 
still of opinion that it would preserve the purity of the 
choice of electors, better than any other system, in bringing 
the subject to the people who cannot be easily corrupted, 
and in breaking down extensive combinations. I agree with 
you, however, in the general tone and spirit of your views, 
believing frequent changes dangerous ; and that favored as 
we are with the most distinguished blessings, we ought not 
to endanger the whole in speculative attempts. 

"Your hasty account of the affair between Randolph and 
Clay turns out to be accurate. It is much to be regretted. 
A member of Congress is for everything done or said in his 
place to every person not a member, a non-combatant, and 
I should suppose that there is no canon in the code of duel- 
ling which requires a Secretary to call out a member. The 
precedent is pernicious : and as its spirit is very easy of 
infusion into our ardent young men, I should not be sur- 
prised to see imitations follow closely and frequently on its 
heels. 

"I am sincerely and respectfully your friend, 

"DeWitt Clinton." 

The latter part of this letter refers to a subject that 
troubled Mr. Miner all his life : the practice of duelling, 
especially in the Southern states. Down to the assault of 
Brooks on Sumner, in 1856, he never ceased to denounce it 



Il8 ( HARLES MINER, 

as not only anachronistically brutal, but cowardly, — the 
very prevalence of the custom in the South giving the men 
of that section a familiarity with "drop shots" which was 
not, fortunately, existent at the North, and therefore offered 
to swaggerers an unequal chance in the field, which they 
mistook for courage. 

[April 8, 1826.] 

"I went to the President's yesterday ; the interview was 
very agreeable, frank and social." 

I April 10, 1826.] 

"I always loved you better than you did me, and I never 
wished for goods, wealth, anything, only as I could share 
it with you, and make you happy. Your poetic quotations 
were too flattering, but still agreeable, as they showed good 
taste and reading. I always knew your mind was of the 
higher order. I do not know in a single instance you have 
judged erroneously in matters of literature or taste. Since 
you first came to my bosom I have loved your mind for its 
correctness and purity, as well as your person for every- 
thing that could render one near us agreeable : and the 
wish for your happiness and the children's is the first in 
my heart." 

[April 22, 1826. J 

"Oh, the President's ! Yes, we had a charming time. 
Mr. Adams received us standing up, with the gentlemen 
around him; the ladies we bowed to, they sitting. Mr. 
Adams then entered into conversation with me, with great 
frankness ; some other gentlemen came up, and he went to 
meet them. Having taken up as much of his time as 1 
thought fair, I retired and was chatting with some others, 
when Col. Trimble came to tell me the President expected 
me to return, so back I went, and we got our heads to- 
gether again. * * * We did not dine in the long room, but 
in the usual dining parlour. The plateau and candlesticks 
were superb ; but not on so large a scale as in the other 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 119 

room. The party was more select ; the wines, particularly 
a kind I never saw before, delicious. Indeed, these things 
before I had cared nothing about. The truth is, the Pana- 
ma question had just been settled by a glorious vote in its 
favor; I had taken a deep interest in the measure, and 
had contributed by my resolution and remarks a good deal 
to advance it. Mr. Adams was well pleased ; and why 
should I not let feelings flow a little? I then thought, 1 
wish my Lete was here." 

[May 3, 1826.] 

"I have just returned from the President's drawing- 
room. * * * I pointed out the chief great men to [some 
Chester and Delaware County constituents]. Introduced Mr. 
Pennock, who was next me, to Mr. Clay, Mr. Storrs, Gen. 
Brown, Mr. Adams, and young Mr. Adams. They got 
ice-cream, coffee, and punch, and seemed to be, I presume 
they were, very happy. Mr. Webster came to me with more 
than ordinary kindness, quite out of his usual course; got 
his arm around me, and declared to Gov. Barbour that my 
speech was the best and soundest argument on the Consti- 
tution that was delivered.* It was part flattery, doubtless ; 
but before such company, and the manner, it being uncalled 
for by the occasion, was not to be disregarded. He came 
to me afterwards to have some confidential conversation 
about an important matter ; I gave my opinion, clearly and 
firmly. I told him in relation to it : T would not recede an 
inch.' 'Nor I, Mr. Miner,' said he. So I was glad we 
agreed. * * * I had business with the Postmaster General 
to-day, I wanted a new post-office created, and a friend 
appointed post-master. There were several gentlemen in. 
and I told Mr. McLean I would leave the application for his 
consideration. 'Oh, no,' said he, putting everything else 
aside ; T will attend to it immediately.' He did so, and 
made the appointment before I left him. This for you. It 
was not so when I came here, my lady! So I talk of self, 
self." 

*See letter of March 20, 1826. 



120 ( IIARLES MINER, 

There are very few letters of the short session of 1827, 

and they hardly refer to public work at all ; the reports of 

the House show Mr. Miner taking an interest in public 

buildings, relief for sufferers by fire in Alexandria, etc., 

and opposing an ill-digested bill for the grant of canal 

lands to llinois in which he brought out the present Panama 

toll question ; Shall the United States build a canal, and 

pay toll indefinitely for the use of it? But a letter written 

to him very soon after the close of this session has more 

than passing interest : 

"State Department, 

"Washington, March 28th, 1827. 
"Dear Sir: Yours of the 22nd instant has been duly re- 
ceived. My best exertions shall be devoted to merit your 
good opinion, and the many kindnesses you have lav- 
ished upon me, as well as to justify the choice made by 
the Secretary. Mr. Clay treats me with a politeness, con- 
sideration, friendship and confidence which is highly flat- 
tering, although recognized as almost entirely owing to the 
warm recommendation which you have been pleased to give 
me. 1 am very much in company with the Secretary, and 
believe I am daily gaining ground in his good opinion. * 

"Yours Respectfully, 

"W. S. Derrick. m 

I wo years later is another letter from the same hand, 
showing that in Mr. Clay's case, at least, a man may be a 
hero to one in almost as close connection as his valet. 

f Washington. [2 March. 1829.] 

".Mr. Clay and his family intend to leave Washington to- 
morrow evening or Saturday morning, for Baltimore, on 
their way home to Kentucky, lie will of course, be much 
delayed by dinner invitations and bad roads, and will hardly 
get to Ashland in less than a month. God speed him! The 
good wishes of thousands of his fellow citizens attend him. 
As a statesman — as an orator — as a patriot — as a man — he 
leaves not a peer behind." — W. S. D. 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. T2I 

[January 13, 1827.] 

"1 think I confine myself too much and study too much; 
I have nowhere to go where there is heart ; and for these 
great parties, they have very little pleasure for me; but I 
think I am gaining knowledge that may be useful. The 
prudence, if I may say so, of last year, has given me on our 
committee all the consideration I desire. We meet twice a 
week and do a good deal of business. I ought to be happy, 
but without you I cannot be and am not. I don't know 
that that is strange; why should it be? that as I grow 
older I seem to feel that you are nearer to my heart and 
necessary to my happiness more than ever." 

[January 21, 1827.] 

"I had a letter from James Sinton to-day ; he wished me 
to obtain for Mr. Sitgreave's son a berth in the West Point 
Academy. I will if I can; the applications to me to aid in 
getting offices are numerous." 
[January 24, 1827.] 

"Being dressed, and Judge Clark, and Mr. Williams both 
saying I should go, 1 went up to Mr. Clay's party. It was 
full and pleasant; cotillions and waltzing up stairs, whist 
and wine below. The young ladies were neatly dressed, 
their hair all put up with wreaths of roses, lilies and wheat. 
The whirligig waltzing I did not like, but they did. The 
English beau with mustachios whirled them around at a 
great rate; they say he catches hold of their dresses behind 
and rumples them too roughly. The English Minister, 
French, Danish, Mr. Biddle, President of the U. S. Bank ; 
the Postmaster General, Secretary of War, Judges John- 
son, Story and Trimble of the Supreme Court, Mr. W T ebster 
and others were there. Wine, punch, coffee, tea, and cakes 
were handed around. I took a single cup of coffee, nothing 
more. * * * I dined at Mr. Giles' a few days ago, so was 
not at the party given last night. I now mention it for an 
odd circumstance. Mrs. Estill, wife of Mr. Estill of Vir- 
ginia, has a baby since being here last winter, and it was 



122 I HARMS MIXER, 

christened at Mr. Giles' last night, and the British Minister 
stood godfather, and made it a present of a breastpin. Some 
of our backwoods folks don't like it very well, the christen- 
ing and dancing all together; but if both are innocent I 
don't see much harm in their going together. Yet on recol- 
lection one is a solemn dedication to God, and hardly a 
proper ceremony for a ballroom. * * * Mr. Clay as he 
saw I was going came and took me by both hands and men- 
tioned his desires * * * with some kind expressions. 
This is nothing to mc but I tell you everything. This letter 
of course is for the family only." 

[January 27, 1827.] 

"To-day, having received a special note to visit Secretary 
Rush, I went up at 11 to the office and sat an hour. He 
is as much of an enthusiast about silk as 1 am. With the 
advice of President Adams he has, besides obtaining all 
the information possible in this country, sent to our minis- 
ter and agents in London, Paris, Italy and elsewhere in 
Europe for books and all the facts that could be obtained. 
He took me into the library to show me what books he had 
got. His report will not be ready before next session, but 
he is making every exertion to render it useful to the nation, 
the subject, and his own fame and character ; all which 1 
very much approve, and confidently hope something valu- 
able may grow out of it." 

I February 1, 1827.] 

"It is my birth-night. 1 am 47 years of age. This morn- 
ing I returned thanks and prayed devoutly, humbly and 
sincerely. 1 hope acceptably, to our Heavenly Father. 
Many blessing- has he showered upon me. and permit me 
to say, no one for which 1 am more deeply grateful than 
the bringing me to your love and your bosom. 'We clim'd 
the hill thegither' and will totter down hand in hand, 1 
trust, in increased love, respect, kindness, affection. * * * 
I love you dearer than anything else on earth. Had I come 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 123 

here ten years earlier I do think I might have been dis- 
tinguished. As it is, I trust I am respectable, as much as 
my friends had any reason to expect. I pray God to bless 
you and the children and all of us. May my heart be grate- 
ful." 
[January 12, 1828.J 

"I entered into close, pretty solemn discussion with Mr. 
Sprague of Maine, one of the very first men in our House, 
on the same subject that I had the serious conversation 
with Mr. Everett this morning. They are both wrong, or 
I am, and I don't believe I am. My hope is to prevent their 
speaking in favor of the D'Auterive negro claims. Both are 
prepared to speak. I have given my reasons to them for 
rejecting the claim. Time only can determine whether my 
argument avail with them." 

Time disappointed Mr. Miner for Mr. Everett spoke in 
favor of the claim of Marigny D'Auterive for payment 
for a slave of his killed in government service; Mr. Sprague 
seems not to have taken any part in the debates. Mr. Miner 
spoke on this claim on February 7, 1828, and on February 
25, 1828. He opposed it chiefly on two grounds : it was 
unfair to the free man who might be killed in government 
service, whose family could get no pay ; and the govern- 
ment had power over all men, slave and free, in time of 
need. Mr. Brent in reply made an anti-slavery argument 
out of these speeches, saying if these "ideas were ever gen- 
erally entertained by the House, Southerners would return 
to their constituents and by their sides meet such arguments 
the only way they should be met," and again: "He [Mr. 
Miner] asserts — what no man has done before him — that 
the government has a right to enlist our slaves * * * with- 
out compensation for their services * * * and then says 
he does not wish to interfere with our rights to our slaves," 
etc. The bill was recommitted to the committee of claims 
and not heard of again. 



124 < BARLES MINER, 

[January 29, 1828.] 

"I think with you, as in matters of taste 1 am proud to 
do, that the 'Red Rover' is better than the 'Chronicles of 
the Cannongate.' 1 am glad if they have afforded you 
pleasure." 

It was his custom to leave a standing order for new books 
of significance with a bookseller in Philadelphia ; and his 
children always remembered their keen delight when the 
books were opened, and he or their grandfather, Joseph 
Wright, read the last "Waverly" to the gathered family. 
They read so much and so wisely to the blind daughter. 
Sarah, that she became an educated woman. His daughter 
Ellen often spoke of this reading aloud together as one of 
the chief family pleasure.-, and the tired mother, after all 
the rest were sleeping, would sit and read far into the night. 
Sometimes she would speak of their reading; in a letter 
of an earlier date she says: "The bookseller has never 
sent the Annals of the Parish, they were not to be had, 
but we do very well without them. We have history and 
poetry and many very interesting books to read. I found 
a small volume of Littleton's letters in the bookcase whicn 
were read with great pleasure. 1 thought them excellent 
and was speaking of them and inquiring how they came 
to be published, when 1 was told they were not genuine 
letters but all a fiction. Now can you tell me if that was 
the case? However they are well written let who will write 
them." Again she paints a pretty picture of the home life 
he so often longed for: "Charlotte is well enough to be 
playing chess with her Cousin Sarah M. in one corner; 
Cousin S. B. is reading Robertson's Scotland in the other. 
Sarah, our Sarah, is knitting Williams Mittens; Mary sits 
by our side knitting a pair of stockings, Grandfather is 
blowing the fire, and Ellen i- nursing Frisk. William says 
'What will you say about me?' I tell him nothing good if 
he makes so much noise, but he is a pretty good bov and 
delighted that he is thought of consequence enough to write 
letters to his dear father, and to receive answers to them." 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. I25 

[February u, 1828.] 

"Our silk report is, to-day, ordered to be printed — 6,000 
copies. The chairman, Gen. Van Renssellaer, referred the 
report of the committee to me, before he offered it to the 
House, and I approved. It will be valuable, and I shall have 
some credit for it. and really fondly hope not to have been 
here wholly in vain." This letter shows that the statement 
found in two places that he wrote the report is a mistake. 

[February 12, 1828. J 

"The people have a right to my services, if they choose 
to command them, aye, to my life, cheerfully. I am their 
servant, as they have been my friend. But to you and 
Joseph, I say confidentially, 1 have great doubt whether 
our ticket, in the present disturbed state of parties, can be 
elected. I should hate to fail, and am quite willing to re- 
tire with character and applause, rather than be run out. 
This is not, however, to be breathed beyond you two and the 
Doctor. 1 conceal nothing from Joseph and the Doctor. 
My heart is open to them as to myself. Write me what 
you think exactly. I will be guided by you. I can pro- 
duce a powerful impression if I set out. Had I best? 
or better look to our Luzerne lands and try to make the 
children independent ?" 

[February 26, 1828. J 

"I write you to-day a hasty note. I am not in the letter- 
writing humour, but can't let the mail go without dropping 
you a line. I received yesterday a most friendly and kind 
letter from Mr. Pennypacker (formerly in the Assembly 
with me). He urges me to be a candidate again; greatly 
overrates my merits, etc. I have not yet replied, but, my 
dear Lete, my most solemn impressions are that I ought 
not. I do not wish to. Then, it is true, there are moments 
when it seems as if it would be pleasant. Should I not, 
I am sensible there will be moments when I should wish it 
were otherwise. Still, my steady prevailing opinion is that 



126 CHARLES MINER, 

my interest and my credit both require me to retire, while 
I can retire, with a fair name and the public good-will. 
Character may be useful to me and you and the children 
hereafter, and I should husband it. Xo money is to be 
made here. (Mr. Randolph has just come in, not having 
been here before for a fortnight.) The demand for cash 
onstant, and can't be set aside. 1 sacrifice a great deal 
in my business at home, 1 neglect much. I am from my 
family, and have no countervailing pleasure here. It is 
perfectly fair some other Federalist should have a chance 
to come. I shall gain no further favour here. My want 
of hearing daily increases ; prevents my entering into debate 
with ease, and shuts me out from social converse. Is it not 
best to retire while I can do so, well? Why wait, at the 
utmost two winters more, and then be obliged to retire? 
In the meantime I lose many friends, and I risk being run 
out, for really I consider the result doubtful. Buchanan 
is really a strong man, and much as we differ on the presi- 
dential question, I should be sorry to see him out of Con- 
gress. This to your private ear. 1 am in solemn earnest. 
I stand well, — very well. now. The higher offices do not 
open to me. Such are my thoughts. I spoke yesterday 
about an hour, wanting five minutes of it. My own 
opinion is that 1 presented a strong constitutional argument 
on the power of the Government to make internal improve- 
ments Ybu must judge; it will be out in a day or two. ' 

With regard to this speech his wife wrote, March 14th. 
1828, what must have >truck any one on reading the 
speeches of the time: "I have been reading your speech on 
internal improvements again and am much pleased with 
it. There is one thing T notice in your speeches that is not 
always to be seen in others, you never lose sight of the sub- 
jecl bul -crin to understand exactly what you are saying. 
Your speech is a matter of fact one and carries conviction 
with it." 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 1^7 

"House Reps., March 24, 1828. 
"My Dear Letitia: 

"It seems that we must postpone the pleasure of meeting 
until after Congress shall rise. Day after day brings with 
it new subjects of interest which cannot be so long left as 
the time it would take to come home — dear home, sweetest 
spot on earth, to me. * * * I love you all dearly — you 
best and dearest — Ann. the Dr. and little Miss Caroline, 
Sarah, sensible, good, dear Sarah — Mary and Joseph, who I 
feel toward as a son — Charlotte — Ellen — William — Father — 
and Asher's family, are all dear to me. I have gratifications 
here, but many privations. It has been pleasant to be here. 
It is pleasant, but except the personal gratification I see no 
great use in it. What hope is there beyond? If my hear- 
ing was perfect and I could look with fair hope to distinc- 
tion, O, I would make a noble effort. That is hopeless. 
Very well. Let a man know when he ought to be satisfied. 
Now give me independence, let me get out of debt. Let 
me make home pleasant, if I live, to enjoy — if I die — for 
those who are dear to me — that's my feeling — such are my" 
opinions ; and I earnestly hope to be saved from what 1 
deliberately deem the folly of trying to come back again. 
* * * I am writing in the midst of business. This morn- 
ing I presented a petition from this District containing 
more than 1,000 names in favour of the abolition of slavery 
here. Joseph's letter came yesterday ; he says you are 
gardening. Let plenty of peas and potatoes be put in for 
ourselves and the Doctor and Joseph. We have a great 
caravan of wild beasts here; tell Sarah the little monkey 
is among them and the pony, and three noble lions." 

After this date there are very few letters, and in those 
that do remain the absence of any echoes of the rancors of 
the time, noteworthy, perhaps even in Washington, for its 
bitterness, suggests the thought that they may have been 
destroyed with special care. During the recess between the 
first and second sessions of the twentieth Congress Gover- 
nor Metcalfe of Kentucky, wrote him a letter interesting 



I BARLES MINER. 

enough to be interpolated here — later, after the 1829 anti- 
slavery speech, Governor Metcalfe wrote him another 
sympathetic, congratulatory letter — 

"Frankfort, Ky., 14th Oct., 1828. 
• - 1 have the pleasure to acknowledge the receipt just now 
of your letter of the 3rd inst — not the formal expression of 
the term merely, but a most sincere and heartfelt pleasure', 
springing from recollections which it will he my delight to 
cherish through all the vicissitudes of life. For permit me 
to tell you. that among all my fellow sojourners here, with 
whom 1 have been thrown, either by accident or design, it 
would be hard for me to single out the man whose hold 
upon my affection-, is as strong as that of the Honorable 
Charles Miner. * * * Stand up; thou firm and steadfast 
patriot — stand — and continue to love thy country more than 
thyself, worth) as thou art of the love of those who know 

thee best -Thomas Metcalfe." 

.••Washington. Thursday night, after 9; Dec. 11. 1828." 
■'Mv Dear Letitia : 

"I meant to write 

A long letter to-night. 

But you'll have to take up with a short one. 

"Why that isn't very good poetry — Thank you for your 
letter yesterday. 1 did kiss the name; * * * Dressed up 
to-day, Madam, in mv best bib and tucker, had mv hair 
cut. and waited on Mr. Adams. 1 found him alone, went 
through my business, and finding him disposed to be un- 
commonly sociable I sat near an hour. He threw off all 
■ rve; the conversation became animated and interesting. 
Finding himself going far, he said: 'But. this, Mr. Miner, 
is to be understood as entirely confidential,' etc. So, 
Madam, you cannot at present know anything of the matter. 
Joseph, the Doctor, and Asher alone are to know that 1 
have said even so much. Do you smile at seeing the little 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 1-9 

gray-headed fellow that takes your arm to go and feed the 
chickens, sitting in the palace in confidential conversation 
with the President ? * * * I have been reading Telham,' a 
new novel. You shall have it ; there is love, two duels, a 
rape, a murder, much of fashionable high and low life, much 
wit, a great deal of learning, and some prosing. Will you 
read it?" 

[December 11, 1828. "Miner asked me if I had deter- 
mined definitely to withdraw from all public service after 
the expiration of my present term — I told him that my in- 
tention was absolute and total retirement. But my principle 
would be what it had been through life. * * * It was not 
for me to foresee whether my services would ever be desired 
by my fellow-citizens again. If they should call for them, 
I should not feel myself at liberty to decline repairing :o 
any station which they might assign me to, except for rea- 
sonable cause. But I desired him to receive this in confi- 
dence as a candid answer to his question, for I wish not even 
to give a hint to the public that I am yet eligible to their 
service." Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. 8, p. 81. | 

For the reasons stated in the letters of February 12 and 
26, 1828, — chiefly his increasing deafness — Mr. Miner de- 
clined to run again, and returned to West Chester in March 
of the following year. He added to his other elements of 
power a thing by no means common to humanity ; knowing 
when to stop. 

His wife's opinion on this subject had been clear, though 
her patience for four years, away from him and even the 
slightest connection with Washington society, had proved 
that she was not unwilling to do her part toward her hus- 
band's success. She wrote from "Spring Grove," their 
West Chester home, March 8, 1828: "You must not be a 
candidate at the next election ; I am tired of keeping house 
alone, now the farm requires so much attention ; and you 
know I have neither health nor taste for farming, so you 
must stay at home." 



I30 I HARLES MINER, 

Mr. Miner, in Washington, had speedily shown an un- 
usual power of winning and retaining the regard and con- 
fidence of the leaders, especially, of course, the men of the 
administration, with whom he was most closely brought. 
Correspondent after correspondent, for the rest of his life, 
wrote him with hearty esteem, and desire to elicit his opin- 
ion. President Adams' letter-, during and after his presi- 
dential term, were intimately personal, and of a length 
that would seem surprising in these days of hurried dic- 
tation, did we not know their writer's habit of living with 
pen in hand. Not often does one receive from a president of 
the United States an estimate of the character of another 
president, his father : but such was contained in the letter 
John Quincy Adams wrote Mr. Miner (who had written a 
note of condolence after John Adams' death) from Quincy. 

Jul) 31. 1826: 

"My grateful acknowledgments are due to you for your 
very feeling and friendly letter of 16 July, the sentiments, 
contained in which are alike patriotic and philosophical. 
My father's character as a public man has long been be- 
fore his country and before the world — much and grossly 
misrepresented, and not perhaps yet correctly understood. 
\ disposition to do justice to it has however gained strength, 
and will I have no doubt in a few years survive all con- 
troversy. What he was in the concerns of private and do- 
mestic life is of course known to few — to none more in- 
timately than to me — and has given a pungency to the mis- 
fortunes sustained by his loss, which the heart of an af- 
fectionate son can alone conceive. Yet even to the senti- 
ment- of filial gratitude, the circumstances of his decease 
are consolatory. With a body so decayed that 'dying all 
he could resign was breath,' it is soothing to know that he 
did not survive his intellectual faculties an hour — that the 
day of his death seemed as if selected by Providence to 
-tamp upon his country the memory of his life, and that hi- 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 131 

spirit took its flight, hand in hand with that of his great co- 
patriot, rival and friend, to regions where patriotism and 
friendship may still contribute to the joys of existence, 
and where we may humbly hope that rivalry will have no 
place. 

"With my cordial thanks, accept my respectful and 
friendly salutations. „ John QmNcy Adams/ , 

With Daniel Webster Mr. Miner's relations, as his own 
letters have repeatedly shown, were also most cordial ; and 
here, as elsewhere, it seems strange that a man who was only 
four years in public life, should so have retained the inti- 
mate affection of those left in the hurly-burly. Mr. Web- 
ster wrote from Philadelphia, March 24, 1827 : 

"Your acquaintance and regard are valued by me most 
highly, and I trust we may be mutually useful to each other. 
* * * Do not fail to expose that abominable job, the Mis- 
souri business. See that the public know all about it." 

New Year's 1830, Mr. Miner wrote a rhymed "carrier's 
address" of the sort that remained in vogue as late as the 
sixties, eliciting from Mr. Webster a pleasant acknowl- 
edgment : 

"Your muse is happy, and the verse flows easy. The 
oftener I hear from you, in any way, the more gratified I 
shall be." 

A portrait of Webster, given to Mr. Miner with the 
autograph inscription, "To my highly valued friend, the 
Hon. Charles Miner," remains in the possession of the 
family. 

From Washington, January 30, 1847, Mr. Webster wrote : 
"I can only thank you for the kind things you say of me in 
your address of the 4th of December, and for that steady 
friendship you have manifested from our first acquaintance. 
It does me good to think of you, to cherish your regard, and 
to remember our ancient intercourse. It would do me still 
more good to be useful to you. in any way in my power." 



I 32 CHARLES MINER, 

And later, within the shadows of the great state- 
man's disappointment and death, he sent to Mr. Miner 
his most affectionate remembrances. Mrs. Sarah Hollen- 
back Butler', of Wilkes-Barre, was in Washington in 
March, 1850. and met Webster. "It was incidentally men- 
toned." wrote she to Mr. Miner, "that I was from the 
valley of Wyoming. 'Indeed, said he, 'well, pray, madam, 
tell me if you are acquainted with my old friend, Charles 
Miner?' You may imagine my delight in being able to 
say that you were one of my earliest and best friends. He 
seemed very much pleased ; asked many questions, and 
showed the liveliest interest in everything relating to you. 
At the close he said: 'Well, now, my dear madam, I want 
you to get Mr. Butler to write to him to-morrow, and tell 
him he is one of the few in the world that I love to think 
about. Tell him (more impressively) that I love to think- 
about him." 

A remarkable illustration of his power of eliciting and 
deserving the most intimate confidences from the leaders of 
American public life is shown in the following letter from 
Richard Rush — at various times controller of the treasury, 
United States attorney-general, secretary of state pro 
tempore, minister to England and France, and secretary of 
the treasury under John Quincy Adams, during Mr. 
Miner's congressional term. The letter is marked "private," 
but may legitimately be printed, eighty-five years after it 
was written, as a contribution to political history: 

"Washington, June 7, 1828. 
"1 cannot budge from Washington, much as I should 
like to visit Pennsylvania ; no. here I am, tied by the foot, 
and here must remain until the scene is over. My service 
in the Treasury has been peculiarly severe. It is admitted 
by all that its business is never of a light kind. Its investi- 
gations, its calculations, its anticipations, its decisions, al- 
ways imply labor. The mind cannot doze over them. It 
must dive into them seriously and in earnest, and wo be to 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 133 

him who makes mistakes. Nothing but constant, intense 
thought will ever carry a man through the business of the 
Treasury. There is no help or hope for him otherwise. And 
under what circumstances did I come to this business? 
After an interval of seven years passed in our foreign ser- 
vice. To all Treasury business I had necessarily become. 
1 may say, a total stranger. It is too exact, too minute, too 
technical in its nature ever to be followed up by a citizen 
who is abroad, and anxiously engaged while abroad in other 
duties of high moment to his country. Besides, our country 
is perpetually going forward in its home affairs. The cres- 
cent principle is astonishingly active. Every night, when 
the sun sets, we have grown somewhat larger as a nation 
than we were when it rose in the morning. To those who 
are on the spot it is easy to keep up with the daily increase ; 
but think of taking seven years' accumulation suddenly, and 
having to manage it all, off-hand, under the heaviest offi- 
cial responsibilities! During the time I was away a multi- 
tude of new laws had passed — respecting the public lands, 
the customs, and an endless variety of subjects bearing upon 
the finances, with all of which I had to make myself ac- 
quainted, whilst the daily current of new business was at the 
same time pressing upon me, for that would never stop for 
an instant. I had no time to rest, scarcely any to sleep, to 
breathe. Leeway was only to be made up by working at 
extra hours, and how were these to be rescued from the 
everlasting calls of accruing business? Moreover. I found 
the department, into the midst of which I was plunged, 
half filled with worn-out incumbents, which is the case 
still. These are some of the difficulties I had to face. It 
has been my fortune not to have been crushed by them, and 
I have even the satisfaction of reflecting that up to this 
point of time there have been no financial embarrassments 
of any kind, during the period that I have been charged 
with directing this part of our public affairs. But I have 
had my trials. I have suffered in body and in mind : the 



134 I HARLES MINER, 

sufferings of the latter have been the sharpest. I complain 
not, always foolish in public men; but only state facts. 
After my first report 1 was arraigned, in effect, before the 
nation, for imputed mistakes, to the amount of millions 
and millions. I had no name, however poor, in this diffi- 
cult and trying branch of our affairs, to cover me as with 
a temporary shield. Those who assailed me had. I was 
reviled, scoffed at. Would the South have left one of her 
sons so unprotected? I had to live for a long year under the 
agony of suspended reputation. Time came to my relief. 
It fixed the mistakes on those who assailed me as I said and 
knew from the beginning that it would. But I had no state 
to stand up for me and see fair play in the interim. 

After adding, at length and with the bitterness of a 
wounded spirit, that he had even been criticised as being 
"no Pennsylvanian," though he had never been out of the 
state save on public business; and declaring that such treat- 
ment would not have come to one from the South, the West 
or the North, he averred that time had brought his vindica- 
tion, official and other, and closed : * * * "Whilst on this head 
1 will barely add, that the finance committee of the senate, 
at the session that has just passed (General S. Smith of 
Maryland chairman ), made a report, in the course of which 
all the important doctrines upon which I have practised 
touching the public debt, and the sinking fund act, are con- 
firmed, though they were much attacked at first. 

"My dear sir. it is your kind and friendly letter of the 
4th instant, just received, that draws from me; in the full- 
ness of feeling, such remarks as the preceding. Perhap> 
I ought not to make them, but as they have come from me 
I will not recall them. There are indeed many grounds on 
which, if I be rejected by my state, in comparison with 
others I well know that 1 should have no right to utter 
complaint; but to be rejected as being no Pennsylvanian — 
would not this be a hard fate? I have simply unbosomed 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 135 

myself under your letter, and will say no more on the sub- 
ject, being always sensible, my dear friend, of your kind- 
ness and friendship, and tendering you a full reciprocation 
of all such feelings. <<R IC hard Rush." 

Back in West Chester Mr. Miner continued his corres- 
pondence with his old Washington friends. The follow- 
ing [February 19, 1830J, from Senator Peleg Sprague of 
Maine, with whom he had so frankly disagreed on the 
slavery question, gives a near glimpse of the great Webster- 
Hayne struggle: 

"The debate between Mr. Webster and Mr. Hayne seems 
to have attracted very much of the public attention. It 
was indeed a very extraordinary discussion, and produced 
a greater sensation here than any other I have witnessed. 
As to the comparative ability of the two champions, you 
know them and can judge. They both maintained their 
reputation, and increased it. Nothing can be more false 
than those representations which have been made by certain 
letter-writers who would throw Mr. Webster into the shade. 
The only comparison which can be made between Mr. Web- 
ster and Mr. Hayne was that which exists between a giant 
and a man of common strength." 

Jackson's stormy reign had begun ; and his veto of the 
bill chartering the United States Bank was shaking the 
politics of the country from top to bottom. Ex-President 
Adams, from his retirement in Quincy, looked at the storm 
with the eye of an experienced observer ; and in his letter 
to Mr. Miner of October 11, 1830, gave to his corres- 
pondent — as now to the readers of this biography — a review 
of his own administration : 

"Quincy, ii Oct. 1830. 

"Your very friendly letter of the 19th ulto. with the 
number of the Village Record containing the analysis of 
the Veto Message has been duly received and has given 
me great pleasure. The suffrage of so near, so close and so 



l$6 I HARLES MINER, 

impartial an observer as you were at the commencement 
of the last Administration, is of itself worth a multitude 
of others; and if, in the progress of the four years while 
it continued the impartiality was merged in the sentence 
of a candid and benevolent judgment, your voice is not the 
less precious in my estimation, for the kind feeling by 
which it is prompted at present. 

"For the judgment of Posterity upon the Acts and policy 
of the last Administration, so far as Posterity will take 
cognizance of them, 1 never felt any concern — it was marked 
by no signal Event, nor was an opportunity afforded me 
of conferring upon the Nation any benefit which by its 
magnitude would commend itself to the memory of the 
ages. Such an opportunity would have required the con- 
currence of others, which, from what ever motive was with 
held, and as Posterity takes little account of good merely 
intended for, but not enjoyed by them, I do not promise 
myself much of their Gratitude or even of their Remem- 
brance. My name will hold its place in our future Fasti 
Consulares, but no Appian way, or Column of Trajan or 
Arch of Titus, will exhibit to the eyes of men in future 
Times, its achievements : and disposed as I am to look be- 
fore as well as after, with an eye rather of philosophy 
than of Ambition, I content myself with the slender por- 
tion of regard which may be yielded to barren good In- 
tentions, and aspirations beyond the Temper of the Age, 
leaving the Temple of the Winds, or the Needle of Cleo- 
patra, as more suitable monuments to commemorate the 
virtues of my Successors. 

"Your Analysis of the Message has detected its con- 
cealments, and simplified its duplicities — Internal improve- 
ment and domestic Industry must hang their harps upon 
the willows — I lament their discomfiture, and live in the 
hope of their restoration— The glory that consists in re- 
pressing the energies of the Country directed to the better- 
ing of its condition cannot last. 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. Iff 

"The population dwelling South of Mason and Dixon 
line, will naturally and perhaps necessarily always vote for 
one of themselves to fill the Chair of State — So it will be 
hereafter, as it has been heretofore. This is constitutional 
right; and they cannot be censured for the exercise of it. 
The North is more accommodating ; and will bear all things 
for the sake of the Union — 

"But it is time for us to look a little abroad again — The 
affairs of Europe are re-assuming an aspect of deep inter- 
est — The wheel of Political dominion is not satisfied with 
one entire turn — It is again in motion — can you tell us 
when and where it will stop? Talleyrand said that the 
Restoration of the Bourbons was the beginning of the end — 
Was it not rather the end of the beginning? 

"I wish Pennsylvania may be so well represented in the 
Senate of the Union as your expectation forebodes — and I 
should rejoice to see your own seat in the Capitol resumed 
— but there or elsewhere be assured of the respect and re- 
gard of your friend, ((] Q ^^ „ 

Edward Everett agreed with Mr. Adams in his detesta- 
tion of Jackson's veto and admiration of Mr. Miner's scari- 
fication of it. From Charlestown he wrote on October 22, 
1830: 
"My dear Friend (if you will permit me so to call you) : 

"You wrote me a kind letter at Washington last winter, 
which I fear I have not answered ; and you sent me the 
other day your paper containing your dissection of the Veto. 
How could a man of your mildness commit such a murder 
as you have done of that innocent and guileless thing? 
Seriously, it is the ablest comment, with the exception of 
Mr. Clay's (and that is not abler) which has appeared on 
this renowned paper. * * * I see Stewart is back. Would 
that you were." 

Even more significant was ex-Secretary Rush's state- 
ment, as from an experienced authority, that Jackson knew 



138 I HASLES MINER, 

nothing about banking but had probably been mistaught by 
Van Buren. He wrote to Mr. Miner from York, January- 
s' 1831: 

"Since the President's second attack on the bank (a sub- 
ject that he really does not understand, but in regard to 
which he is probably misled by Mr. Van Buren) the subject 
has acquired fresh interest. I have even received letters 
from Europe, expressing apprehensions for its fate; par- 
ticularly from England, within a few days, where much of 
the stock is held. These letters are of course dated before 
the knowledge of this second demonstration by the head of 
the government had arrived, but under fears of it. * * * 

"Whilst 1 was in the Treasury my attention was neces- 
sarily and officially called, I may say almost daily for four 
years, to the operations of this institution ; and I felt it a 
duty to bear my official testimony to Congress and the na- 
tion of its utility. This I did in my last annual report, in 
which I endeavored to present, in a form as condensed and 
intelligible as possible, its most important benefits to the 
financial operations of the country. As always, 
"Sincerely and affectionately yours, 

"Richard Rush." 

Later, in this same year 183 1, the Anti-Masonic excite- 
ment was adding fuel to the political flame; and if the 
excitement quickly burned out. it was, like brushwood, all 
the hotter while it lasted. William Morgan, accused of 
divulging masonic secrets, had mysteriously disappeared; 
and the critics and enemies of the order accused it of 
spiriting him away and murdering him. The charge was 
heatedly and often denied, but the battle was on, with such 
fury as materially to affect the field of national politics. 
Sincereiy attached to his lodsre. and deeming the widely 
current attacks on the Masons without justification in sober 
reason, Mr. Miner deplored and withstood the agitation 
Opposed to the order -and yet with sobriety, lohn QuinC) 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. I39 

Adams as earnestly espoused the other side. Here, how- 
ever, as before, Mr. Miner was confidentially consulted, or 
cordially written to, by political foes as well as friends. 
Daniel Webster, looking at the strife dispassionately but 
anxiously from afar, wrote him at length from Boston, 
August 28, 1 83 1 : 

"1 wish I could say anything encouraging on the highly 
important subjects mentioned in your letter of the 20th. 

"The Kentucky election has not turned out to be rmite 
as bad as it appeared to be, at the date of your letter, but 
still it is unsatisfactory, and has produced an unfavorable 
impression in this quarter. Speaking to you in the most 
confidential manner, I must say that I concur with you in 
the opinion that there is very little chance of electing Mr. 
Clay. I believe we may hope for the vote of Kentucky 
yet, but even with that I do not perceive where we are to 
find enough others to make a majority. My private im- 
pression is, there is but one chance to save the country 
from further and worse misrule, and that is to bring for- 
ward some man in whose favor the National Republicans 
and Anti-Masons of Pennsylvania and New York could 
be induced to unite, so as to secure the votes of those states. 
With them, Ohio, New England, New Jersey, Delaware, 
and Maryland would be able to elect a President. But 1 
fear there is very little prospect of finding such a candidate. 

"You say that you believe the Anti-Masons are intent on 
pushing Judge M [McLean]. It will never do; our friends 
in New England and else where will never be brought to 
support him. As against him the election of Gen'l Jackson 
would be certain. 

"A gentleman writing from Philadelphia says : 'Let us 
put up a candidate, if we make a change, in whom we have 
perfect confidence, and if we fail, still a minority united 
on principle, and with a sound head, is better security to the 
country, than success in behalf of moderate talents or doubt- 
ful principles.' I agree to all this ; at the same time that I 



I4O CHARLES MINER, 

see the difficulty of finding the man. I confess 1 do not 
know him. You are pleased to say that I possess a portion 
of the confidence of the conflicting parties. Perhaps it 
may be so, but 1 cannot think the country is inclined to 
bring me forward, and it is certain that I shall do nothing 
to bring myself forward. I have little experience in public 
affairs, and have not been long enough before the country to 
produce great general confidence. My only merit is an 
ardent attachment to the country and the constitution of 
Government, and 1 am already more than paid for all my 
efforts, if you and other good men think I have done any 
thing to defend the Constitution and promote the welfare 
of the country. In the favor which those efforts have at- 
tracted towards me, I see promise of a real, substantial, 
fixed attachment among the people to the Constitution. The 
great body of the community is quite sound on that point. 
And that is the feeling which we ought to cultivate, and on 
which we must rely. If we bring about a change it will 
be done by us as a Union party. 

"And now, my dear sir, will you tell me whether in your 
judgment, there is any individual, who could so unite the 
Anti-Masons and National Republican voters of Pennsyl- 
vania as to carry the state against Gen'l Jackson ? I should 
like much to know your present impression on that vital 

question. 

"The Anti-Masonic Convention at Baltimore will have a 

most responsible part to act. The prosperity of the country, 

perhaps the fate of its Government, hangs on their decision. 

God give them true wisdom, and disinterested patriotism. 

"I shall be glad to hear from you at your earliest leisure. 

"Yours truly, 

"D. Webster. 

"You will of course consider this letter in the strictest 
sense confidential." 

In this correspondence it is obvious that Masons and 



A PENNSYLVANIA 1'IONEER. I4I 

Anti-Masons were at that time, at least, united in their 
desire to beat Jackson. 

Three months later the same absorbing theme, among 
others, was dwelt upon by Mr. Adams in what is, in some 
respects, the most interesting letter in all the interesting 
Charles Miner correspondence. John Quincy Adams, 
though there have been plenty of book-makers among our 
presidents, was the only poet in the list; and his verses to 
Mr. Minsr are not only a remarkable indication of com- 
plete impartiality and implicit trust in his political integrity, 
but in themselves a neatly-turned literary product of the 
old-fashioned Horatian order, derived from a sound, classi- 
cal training. Those were the days when our colleges had 
no boilershop adjuncts or courses in retail shoe-selling; 
and Mr. Adams, it will be remembered, was an ex-professor 
of rhetoric : 

"Quincy, 18th Oct., 183 1. 

"Dear Sir: "It is perhaps a puzzling question of minor 
morals to determine how much of the pleasure which we 
derive from the applause of our friends, or of the world, is 
to be set down to the account of vanity, and how much to 
the honest love of praise. These are very different things, 
and yet I fear are very apt to run into one another. 

"Mrs. Thrale tells us that Dr. Johnson was delighted 
more than beseemed a philosopher, at a compliment from a 
gentleman, who, upon seeing him upon horseback, declared 
he rode as well as the most illiterate jockey in England. 
Something akin to this I have experienced from the notice 
in your letter of the Psalm annexed to my Anti-Nullifica- 
tion 4th of July discourse, and of the Hymn at the close of 
the Eulogy ; but of the high praise with which you honour 
them, the larger half belongs to another. The Hymn was 
not written by me, nor do I know the author. It was prob- 
ably Dr. Doane, the respectable Episcopal clergyman who 
read the prayers, and composed the long one, which was 
much admired. The Psalm was one of a number at leisure 



142 ( HAKLES MINER, 

hours versified by me, and which I gave to be sung by the 
Choir, deeming it appropriate to the occasion. 

"But to the numerous friends to whom I sent copies of 
the Oration, many have in return expressed hearty con- 
currence in its opinions, and very flattering appreciation 
of its principles. You alone have spoken of the Psalm, and 
the variety of applause from the 'bi forked hill' has given 
an unusual value to yours. 1 have in the course of my life 
wasted so much of my time in the composition of rhyme 
as to have acquired some facility in tacking syllables to- 
gether. 1 have chiefly confined myself to translations, with- 
now and then a few original lines for a young lady's album 
— or such as those herewith enclosed, which, as they happen 
to please or displease you, may be put upon the file or in 
the fire. 

"1 am much indebted to you for a copy of your printed 
Speech upon internal improvements, enclosed with your 
letter. There must be some mistake with regard to the 
Tract published during the sitting of the Convention of 
1787, and from which the extract in your speech is given. 
You will observe in the Eulogy, page 45, notice of a letter 
addressed by Mr. Monroe to his constituents, after he had 
been elected to the State Convention, which was to decide 
upon the Constitution of the United States, and before the 
Convention met. The statement that this letter was imper- 
fectly printed, and that he sent a copy of it, among others, 
to Mr. Jefferson, is made in the Eulogy upon the authority 
of a manuscript of autobiography in Mr. Monroe's own 
hand writing furnished me by Mr. Gouverneur, since his 
decease. In that letter he says he stated his objections to 
the Constitution, which he afterwards set forth more at 
large by speeches in the State Convention. There he voted 
against the adoption <>t' the Constitution, though he would 
have been willing t<> accept it with previous amendments. 
In the manuscript to which I have alluded not a word i- 
said of any tract published while the General Convention 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. '43 

was in session. If therefore the Tract to which you refer 
was written by Mr. Monroe, it must be the same address 
to his constituents, written after his election to the State 
Convention. I should not indeed have supposed that there 
was any period of his life at which he would have written 
of the state governments the sentence quoted in your 
speech — yet so it may have been. Mr. Madison had at that 
time quite a little respect for the state governments, and 
little did they deserve. A history of the Confederation from 
the Declaration of Independence to the 4th of March, 1789, 
would, as you have observed, be a most instructive moral 
and political discourse for the perusal of the people of the 
United States, but they would not read it. Who reads 
any portion of our history? Twenty editions of the 
Waverly Novels, in fifty volumes, would make as many for- 
tunes for their printers before one thousand copies of a 
History of the United States could be sold, were it written 
with the pen of Cornelius Tacitus himself. 

"With regard to the fiscal concerns of the States which 
compose our Confederation, including those of the colonial 
governments before the Revolution, my own information is 
exceedingly scanty. Whoever should trace them out, accord- 
ing to your suggestion, would make a very curious exhibi- 
tion, and for aught I know, if he would give it the form 
of a novel and season it with crossings in love, great say- 
ings, and impossible adventures, he might make it an inter- 
esting work. 

"In 1652 the colonial government of Massachusetts Bay. 
upon their own authority, coined silver money. Whether 
it was high treason or state sovereignty might form the 
subject of a learned and ingenious historical dissertation. 
In Virginia and Maryland they did not coin silver but they 
turned tobacco leaves into pounds, shillings and pence, a 
metamorphosis, if not equal to any in Ovid, quite the re- 
verse of that celebrated by Swift, of Ovid himself into 
waste paper. About the time of the South Sea schemes in 



144 CHARLES MINER, 

England, and Law's Mississippi gold mines in France, the 
General Court of Massachusetts Bay made a land bank, 
which swelled to as large a bubble, and shivered into as 
many imperceptable atoms of vapor when it burst, as those 
schemes of more notorious infamy. Paper money was al- 
ways the besetting sin of Massachusetts Bay ; and one of 
their greatest financiering achievements was an accurate 
adaptation of the decimal arithmetic by making their pound, 
lawful money, exactly equivalent to two shillings, or one- 
tenth of a pound sterling. If no other instruction could be 
derived from a history of colonial financiering, the pupil 
would be dull indeed who could not acquire from them 
some accomplishment in the art of committing national 
bankruptcy. Perhaps they might teach the better lesson to 
avoid it. 

"While I was procrastinating the intention to answer your 
letter I received your short note with two of your election- 
eering papers ; and since then I have received your repub- 
lication of Mr. Wirt's Letter to the Anti-Masonic Conven- 
tion at Baltimore, with your declaration and that of several 
of your masonic brethren, that you concur entirely with the 
sentiments of that letter. The definite object of the Anti- 
Masons in the United States is the abolition of the Institu- 
tion. In consenting to be their candidate, Mr. Wirt ap- 
proves this object, and the means by which they are avowed- 
ly endeavoring to accomplish it — that is, by acting upon 
popular elections. General Peter B. Porter and Mr. W. 
B. Rochester in Xew York have expressed the same opinion, 
by advising the surrender of the charters by the lodges. 
You have seen by my letter to Edward Ingersoll that this 
is more than I, Anti-Masonic as I am, would absolutely 
require, though I earnestly desire it and believe it the best 
course for the Masons to adopt, both for themselves and 
for their country. But that they should discard forever 
all naths, penalties and secrets I deem indispensable, and 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. H5 

until that is accomplished I shall be a determined Anti- 
Mason. Although in my letters to Mr. Ingersoll I made 
repeated mention of your name, I did not anticipate that he 
would communicate them to you. I authorized him to show 
them to Mr. Walsh, because he had denounced me to the 
public as a madman for my anti-masonry. But if you, and 
Washington and others whom I love and revere, have 
taken the masonic oaths and bound yourselves by them 1 
can only say 

'There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple ; 
If the ill spirit have so fair a house, 
Good things will strive to dwell with't.' 

"A difference of opinion with you will always be to me 
a subject of regret, but will never impair the regard and 
esteem with which I am, Dear Sir, 

"Your friend and servant 

"J. Q. Adams." 

Enclosed was the following poem which the family still 
have in Mr. Adams' handwriting: 

"To Charles Miner, Esq., 18 October, 183 1. 

"Idem velle atque idem nolle, ea demum firma amicitia est. 

Catiline in Sallust. 
"Amicus Socrates, Amicus Plato, sed magis Arnica Veritas. 

Cicero. 

"Say, brother, will thy heart maintain 

The Roman's maxim still ; 
That nothing brightens Friendship's chain 

Save Unity of Will. 
Ah, no, Unhallowed was the thought : 

From perjur'd lips it came, 
With Treachery and with Falsehood fraught. 

Not Friendship's sacred Flame. 



146 BARLES MINER, 

"To Roman Virtue shall we turn 

To kindle Friendship's fires? 
From purer Sources let us learn 

The Duties she requires. 
To Tully's deathless page ascend. 

The surest guide of Youth : 
There we shall find him, Plato's Friend, 

But more the friend of Truth. 

"And thou to me, and 1 to thee 

This maxim will apply : 
And leaving Thought and Action free, 

In Friendship live and die. 
Be thine the Compass and the Square, 

While I discard them both — 
And thou shalt keep and I forbear. 

The Secret and the oath." 

To appreciate the full force of the feeling expressed in 
the letters and the poem, one must turn to Mr. Adams' 
historians and biographers; they vie with each other in 
-tating his aloofness. Says Schouler : "He judged con- 
temporaries harshly. Among men, great or small he had 
hardly an intimate friend"; to which James Freeman 
Clarke, in his "Anti-Slavery Days," adds "I suppose he was 
one of the most lonely men of his time * * * he was full 
of dislikes and distastes," etc. But still more must one 
1 bis anti-masonic papers and letters; it is a strong 
proof of his true greatness of character that he could s,» 
thoroughly hate the sin. and so heartily love the sinner.* 

His friend, ex-Secretary Rush, another anti-mason, con- 
fidentially consulted Mr. Miner regarding the anti-masonic 
presidential nomination of 1832. Mr. Rush, writing from 
York, September 4, 1830, had advised no nomination, but 

•See "Letters to Edward Livingston, Grand High Priest, published 
in 1834. In these Mr. Adams objected (.specially to the oath of 
secrecv and the use of God's name 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 147 

a resolution not to support Jackson. Afterward, as indi- 
cated in his letter of October 21, he accepted, as he later 
supported, William Wirt as the presidential nominee. 

As the election of 1832 approached, came another letter 
from a politician still more deeply interested in the result : 

"Ashland, August 25th, 1832. 

"Dear Sir : The Kentucky elections have terminated 
in the Jackson candidate for governor, by a majority of 
1,260 votes, the Republican candidate for lieut.-gov. by a 
majority of 1,506 votes, and in 60 out of the 100 members 
that compose the house of representatives ; also in securing 
in the senate, where the majority was against us last year, 
a majority of 22 out of the 28 members that compose that 
body. 

"We have been so often mortified with the issue of elec- 
tions in this state, that I do not know whether you will 
take any interest in the causes of our recent partial defeat. 
They were, 1st: the employment of extraordinary means 
by the Jackson party, within and without the state; on this 
point all the efforts were brought to bear, and every species 
of influence was exercised. The patronage and means of 
that party was profusely used. 2nd : an irruption of Ten- 
nessee voters, who came to the polls in some of our border 
counties. Last year official returns of all the voters in all 
the counties were made to form a basis for the practical 
adjustment of the ratio of our representatives. In some 
of the counties, at the recent election. I understand that 
the Jackson majority exceeded the whole number of the 
voters, according to those returns. * * * 

"I remain always 

"Faithfully your friend, 

"C. Miner, Esq. "H. Clay." 

"P. S. Your own discretion will suggest to you the 
impropriety of the publication of this letter. 

"H. C." 



I48 CHARLES MINER, 

The same year, 1832. afforded another proof that Mr. 
Miner though in retirement was still looked to for help. 
In Bethania, Pennsylvania, was published in pamphlet form, 
by a body of men who wished to rouse and educate public 
spirit on the subject, "An Extract from a Speech in the 
House of Representatives in 1829 on the subject of Slavery 
and the Slave-trade in the District of Columbia, by Charles 
Miner; with notes." 

This speech, the committee of publication stated, was un- 
satisfactory in its suggestion of gradual emancipation, but 
they chose it "on account of the author's personal knowl- 
edge." Mr. Miner himself notes that his speech on this 
republication was criticised as being too moderate to suit 
the temper of the time, which he himself had helped to 
create, but adds that at least it helped to spread information 
and arouse thought. 

In 1832, also, he finally left West Chester and returned, 
for the rest of his days, to his wife's inherited farm at 
"Wrightsville," afterwards Plains Township and now 
Miner's Mills Borough, two miles and a half north of 
Wilkes-Barre. The unpopularity of masonry in Chester 
county may have had some influence toward the change ; 
his deafness was an increasing trouble ; and another reason 
was, as already given in a quoted letter as far back as 1828, 
to "look to our Luzerne lands and try to make the children 
independent," an ambition which he lived to see accom- 
plished. The Village Record was sold to an employee on 
credit, which was met by payments in installments ; and 
Asher was left free to follow his brother to the Wyoming 
Valley, which he did two years later. 

That he was not forgotten in West Chester was pleasant- 
ly shown in 1835, when, revisiting the town, he was given a 
complimentary non-partisan dinner, and responded to the 
toast : "Our guest, the Hon. Charles Miner — as the public 
man we hail him for his services in promoting the interests 
and happiness of our beloved country ; as a private citizen 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 149 

we thank him for the example of his virtues ; and he has 
our warmest wishes that his future years may he as happy 
as his past life has been useful and honorable." 

A few words quoted by Mr. O. J. Harvey from a private 
letter show Mr. Miner was the same happy, helpful spirit in 
WestChester that he was everywhere else : "The young Yan- 
kee printer, ridiculed by the Democracy of Chester County 
as a 'Yankee tin peddler,' won his way to the esteem and con- 
fidence of the plain and practical Quakers, then, as now, 
powerful and influential in that old county. He was a 
popular man with young people, his kindly smile of recog- 
nition being long remembered, and the pure sentiments dis- 
seminated through the columns of his paper had a salutary 
effect in elevating the moral and intellectual tone of its 
readers." Again : "The Village Record was published for 
many years in a small frame building on High street near 
Gay. The personal appearance of Charles Miner in this 
office is well remembered, especially on publication day.-. 
when with a short apron of green baize or flannel he took 
an active part in issuing the Record — his kindly countenance 
and manner leaving a pleasant impression on the memory 
that more than half a century has not effaced. He was a 
genial and kind hearted man, very fond and considerate of 
the young." 

In a letter to Mr. Miner written in 1847, Mr. Henry S. 
Evans, who took the Village Record on Mr. Miner's re- 
turn to Wilkes-Barre in 1832, said concerning a new paper 
he, with others was about to start : "Now my honored friend 
we know that our fate depends upon starting right. That 
is impossible without your aid in our opinion. We must 
have the aid of your pen — as the only one that can place us 
in the position we covet. With the aid of your pen. a few 
weeks at least, and we have no fears. * * * Indeed to 
decline would destroy all our calculations." And in 1858 
the editor of a collection of Chester county verse, wrote Mr. 
W. P. Miner : "We cannot get along without something 



I'O < SABLES MINER, 

from Charles Miner; his name has been so long and hon- 
orably associated with the ramified interests of our county 
that we deem a contribution a sine qua non." 

Their blind daughter, Sarah, (of whom he writes, ''cheer- 
ful, intelligent, her society was agreeable, and for myself, 
I may say, she has not only been an obedient daughter, 
but an agreeable companion, and faithful friend," and of 
whose poetry her family and friends were proud) has 
described their new home on the "Plains" in the cozy, low- 
browed cottage under the great sycamore that family tra- 
dition says was once the riding-switch of an ancestress, 
which still flourishes by the door : 

M\ HOME BENEATH THE SYCAMORE. 

There is a lovely, lonely spot, 
In thought I often wander o'er; 
'Tis far away, an humble cot 
My home beneath the Sycamore. 

The stream glides there with murmuring sound, 
Forgetful of the torrents roar. 
And mountain winds sigh softly round 
My home beneath the Sycamore. 

With waving vines the trees are clad, 
And blossoms yield their fragrant store. 
And wild birds warble to make glad 
My home beneath the Sycamore. 

My father and my mother dwell. 
Within that cot so shaded o'er: 
No wonder that I love so well 
My home beneath the Sycamore. 

Here he loved to keep open house. In two day-books, 
combining diary and accounts, are many entries that show 
his happiness as host, and many other items of interest of 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 1 5 1 

which just a few must be quoted, they are so full of char- 
acter: The books cover the period from September, 1839, to 
May, 1853. Sandwiched in among minute statements of 
accounts, come notes showing the generous habit of the 
family ; orders on Hibler and Yosts ; Hollenback and 
Rutter's, Z. Bennetts', etc. ; digging coal, selling coal lands, 
butchering, setting hens, hiring or discharging men ; "Paid 
Jacob in coal," "Gave Sylvia an order on Hollenback"; 
"Sally Slaughback Cr when we killed and put up our meat." 

August 28, 1840. "They charge 75 a rod fto dig a ditch] 
and rind themselves. I agree to give it but think it not 
enough if they do well. It is left to me to say what more, 
or whether anything shall be paid." 

December 19, 1844. "Letitia sent Mr. Sheppard a nice 
turkey, 2 b. buckwheat flour, a ton coal." 

Christmas, 1844. "Roasted two nice turkeys Sister 
Thomasin, Cousin Eliza, Fuller and Charles Colte, E. Bow- 
man Miner, Charles Miner dined with us. Wm. & Elizabeth 
sent 1 turkey to Mr. Clayton— 1 to Mr. Dyer by Mrs. Ligget 
1 to Mrs. Drake — Furnished 1 for Christmas dinner — 4. 
Letitia sent 1 to Mr. Sheppard, the minister — 1 to Mrs. 
Overton. I, 1 to Mr. Dorrance and we furnished 1 for Ch 
Dinner — 4. Both families united sent 1 to Dr. Miner. I 
sent Rev. Mr. Dorrance a load of coal." 

1846. "Memorandum: Have this fall given Mr. Rev. 
Moyster, order for ton coal at bed, sent him a ton to his 
house. Wm. gave him 2b buckwheat. Pair fowls. Sent 
load coal to Mr. M house. Ton to Mr. Sheppard. Hind 
quarter veal (excellent) 2 b oats. Beans. * * * Welcome 
but minuted for our satisfaction." In the midst of many 
entries like these one is not surprised to come on the follow- 
ing : "Finding that we have lived beyond our means, we all 
resolve to, cheerfully unite in retrenching our expenditures 
and practicing the strictest economy." 

1840, May 13. "Christian took down a log to build the 
Log (political Harrison) Cabin." 



152 CHARLES MINER, 

September 24. "My esteemed son in law Jesse Thomas 
with his wife Ellen, daughter Sarah & their daughter little 
Anne came to visit us Sept. 19, exceedingly welcome." 

1841, "Tuesday, March 16. * * * Yesterday, fair, 
good sleighing — at 1 1 a. m. Dear Asher was buried. He 
had been ill since Tuesday, the 2nd instant. It was of a 
disease of the heart as was supposed. On Sunday the 7th 
he had a stroke like Apoplexy, and from that time could 
not turn himself in bed, but suffered little pain, was cheer- 
ful, sometimes pleasant. On Saturday, 13, he grew rapidly 
worse. Then the pain about the region of the heart was 
severe — on our proposing to send for a doctor he said — 'It 
will do no good, there is no relief but in Death,' and expired 
a little before 5 o'clock, March 13, 1841. Aged 63 years 
and 10 days, having been born March 3rd. 1778. * * * 
His beautiful and lovely daughter Mary was buried about 
a vear ago with consumption ; and his good daughter Sarah 
was buried with the same disease on Friday the 5th, only a 
few days before her father. Their house is indeed a house 
of affliction." 

184 1. "June: On Thursday about noon, 17th our dear 
cousin Helen, brother Asher's daughter, died of Consump- 
tion, and was buried on Saturday, a very large funeral. 
* * * This is the 4th funeral in that family within 18 
months." 

1842. "April 15: William P. Miner, after a five weeks 
absence at West Chester, returned with his wife, he having 
been married on Monday evening, \pril 11. to Miss Eliza- 
beth D. Liggit." * * * 

1844, Tuesday 16. "This is the anniversary of our wed- 
ding day, having been married Jany 16, 1804 — 40 years — 
Letitia then being 15 years, 7 months and 5 days old — 
Charles being 23 years, 11 months and 16 days. Lete born 
June 11, 1788; Charles born Feb. 1, 1780. We have been 
greatly helped by a kind superintending Providence. May 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 153 

we have grateful hearts — pure and cheerful lives; and be 
ready cheerfully to go when our Divine Master shall call." 
"1844, July 3, Professor [George] Ticknor of Boston and 
Professor Rogers here. Waited on them to the Monument. 
Mrs. Ticknor and 2 daughters along." [In a letter from 
Mr. Ticknor, dated July 25, 1844, he says: "I have been 
absent from home for the last two months, travelling in 
the interior of Pennsylvania and New York for Mrs. Tick- 
nor's health."] 

March 19, 1851. "I have been sick for 10 days— Yesterday 
Dr. Miner visited me. On Saturday night I was crying out 
with pain in my right breast. The old frame is nearly 
worn out. Dr. Miner said, "Not now, Uncle Charles ; but 
when I do come and find the shades of death gathering and 
darkening upon you I will tell you." 

April 16, 1852. "Letitia W. Miner— my dear— my 
tenderly loved wife for 48 years, departed this life Friday, 
February 27, 1852. Born June, 1788, she was 63 years and 
8 months old. 

"We were married January 16, 1804. She died of con- 
sumption, having been sick several months. 

"She was of fine person — very handsome in early life — 
pure in mind — spotless in virtue, intelligent and of a fine 

literary taste." 

August 13th, 1852. 

"On Friday came Win. Butler, Esq., and lady (our dear 

Letitia Thomas that was) and their lovely daughter, our 

great grandchild, their nurse and George and Mary Thomas, 

son and daughter of our son-in-law, Dr. Isaac Thomas, 

and Miss Mary Brinton that was, all cordially welcome. 

On Saturday evening came my nephew Charles Boswell. 

Esq., President of the Hartford Bank, rejoiced to see him. 

A time of as perfect enjoyment as human nature is capable 

of!" 

October 16, 1852. "I was visited by Mr. Penn, G. 



154 CHARLES MIXER. 

Grandson of Wm. Penn. He had called several weeks 
ago, with Judge Woodward and 1 was not at home. Social, 
pleasant, etc." 

"November 27th, 1852. 
"Thanksgiving Day. Had to dinner Mrs. Leggett, Mary 
Overton. Mary Hancock. Win.. Elizabeth and the children, 
Asher M Stout, lady, nurse and children. Mrs. Julia Miner. 
Fuller, Charlotte and the 3 boys, Miss Abbott, Miss Searle 
and brother, Mrs. Adams and Mr. Abbott (her brother) 
Joseph W. Miner and Charles A. Miner. Had a turkey. 
young goose — pair of ducks — chicken pie and baked beans — 
boiled turkey and oyster sauce, mince pies (topping) apple 
pies, pudding, etc. Then from under our own roof tree we 
had grandmother Wright 84, myself ~$. Sarah, our be- 
loved grand-daughters Caroline D. Thomas and Lete M. 
Lewis, Jesse, Ellen. Lete. Isaac and the little ones. A de- 
lightful day and happy time." 

A contribution to the Pittston Gazette gives an interest- 
ing picture: "* * * Young man! if you think you don't 
know anything, that written, will interest others, let me tell 
you what to do. Saddle up your horse some afternoon 
next week, or if you have no horse, go on foot through the 
mud— it will pay. Start from where you live, down the 
road or canal, it does not matter which. Keep your eyes well 
about you until you reach Sperring's old stand, upon the 
Plains. If you think then you have seen nothing worthy 
of thought, and of deep thought, too. turn down the cross 
road, by Captain Baily's, take first right turn, and the 
second house after you cross the bridge, (notice the beauti- 
ful view as you descend the hill). A low. neat snug cottage, 
with fine shade trees in front, is the 'Retreat.' Stop there, 
you have gone far enough. Go boldly to the door, knock and 
enter, ask if Charles Miner is at home. If he is, thank 
your stars— take the proffered welcome of a fine old gentle- 
man, and a seat. You are at home. Don't be bashful 

that is bad anywhere, but you will feel as little of it there as 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEEK. I 55 

at any place I know. If you are State born he knows your 
father or your grandfather, or if from North or East, he is 
sure to know those men of your county whose names have 
been familiar to you from childhood. After you are com- 
pletely at your ease, perhaps he will say to you as he did to 
me once on a time when I called to pay my respects to a 
man whom all know, respect, and love — 'Well, my young 
friend, what is the news in your place?' Certainly an ordi- 
nary question and 1 answered in the usual indifferent, 
drawling way, 'Nothing new, I believe, Mr. Miner.' 'Noth- 
ing new ! why that is strange indeed — you forget that we 
cannot all live in one neighborhood and see with the same 
eyes — My eyes are getting old, too, they do not see so sharply 
as they did once, and I shall trouble younger eyes to see 
a little for me. Let us see ! let us see if you have no news !' 
and question followed question on subjects that had been 
before me daily, and to me, were not new. 

"Before I tore myself away, I found I could carry news 
even to him who is read up in all which effects the pros- 
perity and well being of the Country — yes, and even impart 
information. 'You see,' said he, 'you know many interesting 
things I did not know, if you will only give yourself the 
trouble to think, and all my neighbors would be as much 
pleased to hear them as I have been. So go home, my dear 
boy, and write them down for friend Sisty, or some other 
county paper ; they will all be glad to get them, and next 
time you come, bring me as much news as you have to-day, 
and you shall be as you and all are — very welcome.' 

"I shall never forget the impression that visit made upon 
me, and I hope I may never lose its influence. I am only 
sorry I have not taken all the advice he gave." W. 

But let us return to our chronological story. 

Almost immediately on his arrival in Wyoming his 
thoughts turned to a subject which had deeply interested 
him for nearly thirty years: the history of the valley, with 
special reference to the massacre of 1778. The following 



156 CHARLES MINER, 

extracts from a letter from Chief Justice Marshall refers 
to an error in his "Life of Washington," bearing upon that 
massacre : 

"Richmond, June 9, 1831. 

"I am greatly indebted to you for your letter of the 5th 
of May, and its enclosures. * * * It is certainly desirable 
that historical narrative should be correct, and I shall avail 
myself of the information you have been so obliging as to 
furnish, so far, at least, as to omit the massacres and the 
charge of Toryism on the inhabitants. 

"Mr. Ramsay, I presume, copied his statement from Mr. 
Gordon, and I relied upon both, as 1 knew that Mr. Gordon 
made personal enquiries into most of the events of the 
war. and that Mr. Ramsay was in Congress, and conse- 
quently had access to all the letters on the subject. It is 
surprising that they should have so readily given them- 
selves up to the newspapers of the day. 

"It was certainly our policy during the war to excite the 
utmost possible irritation against our enemy, and it is not 
surprising that we should not always have been very mind- 
ful of the verity of our publications ; but when we come to 
the insertion of facts in serious history, truth ought never 
to be disregarded. Mr. Gordon and Mr. Ramsay ought to 
1 ve sought for it." * * * 

This, and one dated February 15th, 1831, are printed in 
the History of Wyoming, but it may fitly take its place 
here. The earlier one, Mr. Miner notes, was in reply to 
one of his, after a lapse of twenty-five years, as if it had 
just been received, and in a note in the second edition of his 
"Life of Washington" Mr. Marshall states that, thanks to 
Mr. Miner's information he had very materially modified the 
story of the atrocities of the massacre." 

In 1833 Mr. Miner zealously began to hunt up all avail- 
able facts, in print or in manuscript, but still more by 
sedulous inquiry of "thirty or forty of the ancient people 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. I 57 

who were here at the time of the expulsion." In these in- 
quiries, for years, he was greatly aided, in his increasing 
deafness, by the companionship of his blind and highly in- 
telligent daughter, Sarah, whose memory was extraordi- 
nary ; as they drove about he asked questions and she stored 
away the answers in her mind. The first fruits of his in- 
vestigations appeared in a series of papers called The 
Hazleton Travellers, published in the Wyoming Republican 
and Farmers' Herald, at Kingston, just across the river. 
The "Travellers" were represented as two men from Hazle- 
ton, leisurely going through Wyoming, — one familiar with 
all its history, the other anxious to learn it. The series 
appeared sporadically between 1837 and 1839; but as the 
material grew on his hands a more permanent use of it 
seemed desirable, and it finally took shape in his chief 
literary work. "The History of Wyoming, in a series of 
letters from Charles Miner to his son, William Penn Miner, 
Esq." ; Philadelphia : Published by J. Crissy, No. 4 Minor 
street, 1845, and in December of this year he was elected 
an honorary member of the Connecticut Historical Society. 
The History was an octave volume of 594 pages, in- 
cluding a revised and enlarged edition of The Hasleton 
Travellers, (as far as material was not embodied in the 
text) ; a contemporary ballad of the massacre, various col- 
lateral matter, maps illustrating the Connecticut claims in 
Pennsylvania, and a lithographic view of the monument 
erected on the battlefield, for which Mr. Miner had been 
working for forty years, — by newspaper articles, personal 
appeals to the Connecticut legislature, etc., having written 
to Mrs. Hamilton Bowman, March 24, 1839: "The half- 
finished monument over those who fell at the massacre in 
defense of Wyoming, uninclosed, wrings my heart with 
anguish ; the stain partly on us, principally on Connecticut." 
The shaft was completed, shortly before the publication of 
the history, by the efficient work, as a collecting committee, 
of the women of the region, some of them descendants of 



158 I 11ARLES MIXER, 

those who had fought in the battle. L'nder its shadow, 
every third of July for many years, have been held com- 
memorative exercises. 

The History was published by subscription, Mr. Miner 
financing it. In his circular he said: "The author thinks 
proper to say that no pains have been spared to obtain 
information upon every point connected with his subject. 
He has flattered himself, as Wyoming has become classic 
ground, as innumerable errors have heretofore existed in 
regard to its story, and as its very interesting civil char- 
acter has been scarcely touched upon, that almost every 
gentleman would desire for his library, in respect to it, 
an authentic narrative." The title-page bore the follow- 
ing mottoes: "Diligence and accuracy are the only merits 
which a historical writer may ascribe to himself." "I have 
carefully examined all the original materials that could 
illustrate the subject I had undertaken to treat." 

Certainly no American book of local history was ever 
written with greater care in collecting and sifting original 
materials; and the work, while not of noteworthy literary 
form, has the merits of trustworthiness, interestingness, 
and an uncommonly logical procedure in the general plan 
and in the setting forth of subordinate details. It in- 
stantly supplanted the slight preceding works: Chapman's 
unfinished monograph and Stone's superficial "Poetry and 
History of Wyoming" ; and it has remained the standard 
ever since, — being now rather hard to find in the shops of 
the antiquarian bookseller-. 

The author's original purpose, as brought clearly into 
his mind by the exaggerated accounts of the massacre 
copied by Judge .Marshall, in the "Life of Washington." 
had been to show that, sad as the real story was. it had 
been magnified as a means of exciting American feeling 
against the British during the Revolutionary war. Again. 
says the preface: "Interesting as are the incidents growing 
out of the Revolutionary war. other matters of scarcely 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 1 59 

less moment will claim the reader's attention. For nine 
years Wyoming, or Westmoreland, was under the jurisdic- 
tion of Connecticut; derived its laws from that state, and 
sent representatives to her assembly. For seven years civil 
war prevailed or raged between Wyoming and Pennsylvania. 
The events attendant on those unhappy conflicts demand 
from the historic pen a faithful record." How faithful the 
record, many commendations attest ; of which but one may 
be quoted, as putting the whole into a nutshell. Professor 
Benjamin Silliman of Yale wrote to Mr. Miner [New 
Haven, April 21, 1846] : "The people of the valley, the 
people of Connecticut, and the people of our wide country 
are under great obligations to you for rescuing from ob- 
livion so many interesting facts, and arresting, while it was 
still possible, the traditionary stories of the surviving few." 
In the comparative leisure of his life as farmer and his- 
torian, Mr. Miner delivered several occasional addresses, — 
for instance, at Wilkes-Barre, in 1839, on the centenary 
of John Wesley's birth. In a Fourth-of-July speech, the 
same year, on the fiftieth anniversary of constitutional gov- 
ernment in the United States, he showed that absence from 
public life had not dimmed his sense of civic responsibility, 
or removed his opportunities of service to his fellow-citi- 
zens. Said he, in words which are still needed, three- 
quarters of a century after their deliver}' : "First, fellow- 
citizens, with the deepest solemnity let me say that our Fed- 
eral Constitution was the result of compromise, of conces- 
sion, of the yielding up not merely of prejudices and pre- 
dilections, but the surrender on the part of the states of im- 
portant interests and powers, for the purpose of forming 
the people of the United States, for all foreign and general 
purposes, into one nation, yielding the strength and resources 
of all for the protection, defense and prosperity of all. 
Concession and compromise, conciliation and forbearance, 
are inscribed on every pillar and column of the edifice. 



l6o CHARLES MINER, 

'From turret to foundation-stone,' conciliation and com- 
promise are blazoned all over in letters of light. Take this 
home to your memories and hearts. Next to their Bible 
and their prayers, teach this lesson to your children." 

On Washington's birthday, 1849. he gave an address 
on "Washington, Taylor, Cass, Van Buren, Fillmore." in 
which he again urged that the spirit of concession and con- 
ciliation, the parent of the Constitution and the preserva- 
tive of the Union be sedulously cultivated ; and, in particu- 
lar, declared that "the wise of all parties should be con- 
sulted, that the distracting tariff question may be compro- 
mised to general satisfaction, and established upon a basis 
reasonable and permanent" — a task upon which the country 
is still engaged, sixty-four years after. Mr. Webster's 
commendation of this speech has already been quoted. 

Meanwhile an occasional visitor of note came to his rural 
home; thus J. R. Chandler of Philadelphia (then at the 
height of his editorial and literary fame), having spent 1 
little time as his guest, in 1844, wrote an article for his 
United States Gazette in which he said that Charles Miner 
was "the patriarch of the press" ; "a part of the boast of 
the Valley of Wyoming ;" and that his cottage seemed "more 
sacred than the abode of Wordsworth at Windermere.'' 
Mr. Chandler described his host's conversation as stimu- 
lating rather than didactic, and noted his gentle dignity and 
quiet humor. 

In a letter to his granddaughter. Mrs. William Butler, of 
West Chester, Perm., Mr. Miner wrote, under date of Sep- 
tember 12, 1850: 

"Ten days ago I received a very high compliment — a 
very distinguished honour — two carriages drove up, with 
Dr. Miner in one, and the Hon. Mr. Beaumont in the other, 
accompanied by no less a person than the Hon. Mr. Ban- 
croft, the eminently distinguished historian, our late min- 
ister to England. Immediately upon coming into the valley 
he enquired for Mr. Miner, and rode up — said he had come 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. l6l 

to bring me the British Col. Butler's official letter, giving 
an account of the Battle, on the invasion of the British and 
Indians. It was refused by Lord Aberdeen to my friend 
Everett ; but Mr. B. said he told Lord Palmerston he would 
not take No for an answer. To me a most welcome and 
important document. Wasn't it kind?"* In the Account 
Book he describes this kindness with many expressions of 
gratitude, adding: "So — I set down Saturday, the 24th of 
August [1850] as a bright day in the annals of my declining 
age. * * * And moreover within the fortnight I had re- 
ceived 5 documents from the Hon. Mr. Webster ; and from 
Gen. Caleb Cushing his address at Newbury-Port July 4. 
And since Aug. 28 a letter from him in which he introduces 
to illustrate his subject the name of Mr. Bancroft." 

Correspondence, however, was naturally more frequent 
than personal visits. Letters from many men in public life — 
senators, judges of the Supreme court, governors, cabinet 
officers, full of interesting personal or public news and dis- 
cussion, cheered him in his retirement almost to the end ; 
while requests and thanks for his aid in securing government 
positions were equal in duration. One of these has special 
interest to the Wilkes-Barre reader. It is impossible to 
make a 5 out of the date, but it is evident that it is to his 
nomination by President Polk as Justice of the United 
States Supreme Court, in 1845, that Judge Woodward has 
reference. The judiciary committee failed to confirm the 
nomination because of Judge Woodward's democratic 
views. 

Dear Mr. Miner : Words are too poor to express the 
gratitude I feel for the generous support you have given 
me in this trying crisis. Should I come out of the ordeal 
alive, life with all its energies must be devoted to the work 
(alas! I fear it will be a vain endeavour) of justifying the 
too kind commendations of such men as Chs. Miner — Judge 

♦See "History of Wyoming," pages VII and 254. Unfortunately 
the letter cannot be found ; it was the one that was "Disallowed at 
the Foreign Office." He adds. "It corroborated all my conclusions." 



l62 CHARLES MINER, 

Conyngham & G. Mallery. I am humbled to the dust by 
such astonishing & unmerited demonstrations of confidence 
from such men. God forgive the errors of their too partial 
judgments, and reward the beneficence of their intentions. 
* * * I do not know that you could do more for me, un- 
less you write to Mr. Webster who is on the Judiciary 
Comtee. I will not tax you with a request to do this. 
But 1 know you have the confidence of that great man. and 
if he could be propitiated, the whig party in the Senate 
would be likely to follow his lead. * * * 1 remain, your 
obliged and humble servant, 

"G. \Y. Woodward.*' 
His old friend, Richard Rush, wrote from Sydenham, 
near Philadelphia, December 3, [839: "Mr. Woodward 
gave me and my family the pleasure of his company out 
here where we live, during one of the days of his visit to 
Philadelphia. We talked so much of you that 1 cannot find 
it in mv heart to let him return home without this line from 
me; so you will have to receive it. nolens volens. One of 
the ancients, Anaximander, 1 think it was, but no matter, 
being asked how he would best like to have his birthday 
celebrated, replied: 'Let all the boys of Athens have a 
holiday, when it comes round.' Now I have learned some 
of \oitr secrets; my kind. good, dear old friend. You beat 
this ancient hollow. The thirty-acre plantation, the incom- 
parable garden, and the annual offering of fruits and 
flowers from 'Charles and Letitia' beats the old ancient all 
to pieces. Johnson said that the 'Vision of Mirza' was 
the most beautiful essay in the world. Wolfe declared to 
a brother officer, as the boats with his army were descend- 
ing the St. Lawrence, that he would rather have the fame 
that awaited Gray's Elegy (that poem being then fresh 
out) than any he could gain by successfully storming Que- 
bec. Positively, your idea is as pretty as any of Mirza's 
visions: and for my part I would rather have been the 
author of it than of any T ever remember just now to have 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 163 

heard of in the region of chaste and beautiful and benevo- 
lent fancy. My wife and daughters and whole fireside can 
do nothing but talk about it. You see I speak right out, 
without beating the bush. * * * 

"From yours, Always, Always, Always, 

"Richard Rush." 

An extract from a letter from his nephew, Joseph W. 
Miner, written from Jalapa, Mexico, May 7, 184(6?), 
shows what an "open Sesame" the name of Charles Miner 
was during the Mexican war. 

"Your letter to Gen. Gushing I had to leave at his room. 
* * * I came down with him, and he showed me every 
attention he could. You know he has been our Brig. Genl. 
at San Angel. When I was first introduced to him he 
asked if I was any relation to you. I told him you were 
my uncle, and he told me you and he had corresponded for 
a long time, and wished me to remember him kindly to you 
when I wrote. He always treated me very kindly, and 
made me Judge Advocate of Courts and Common Sessions, 
several times. When I went to Gen. Patterson before 
coming down he also asked me the same question, and 
when I gave him my answer, he said you were an old friend 
of his, and sent his best respects to you. Well, when ! 
came here Col. Hughes, the Governor, asked me the same 
question and said he knew you when in Congress. So, 
you will perceive of how much benefit you are to me here 
without actually knowing it. * * * I must tell you of one 
other incident without being guilty of flattery. I was in- 
troduced to an officer of the 9th Regt. 'Are you any re- 
lation of Charles Miner who wrote the History of Wyo- 
ming?' he said to me. 'I am his nephew,' I answered. 
'Well, that's enough!' as much as to imply 'if you are a 
nephew of the man who wrote that you need not aspire 
to anything higher. That is inheritance enough.' ' 

The following letter from William H. Seward show> 
that Mr. Miner was in touch with the newer politicians as 



164 I II X l< I - 1 S MINER, 

well as the older; and (apparently) that he was still inter- 
ested in the slavery question : 

"Washington, Jan. 28, 1S50. 

"I availed myself of a brief recess of the Senate to visit 
my family at Auburn ; and on my return I have the pleasure 
of receiving your kind note of the 15th, for which I give 
you my thanks. I like both of the suggestions you make, 
and I thank you for them. You will perceive that I shall 
need to exercise caution in bringing them out. They arc 
bold, and wise. 

"Accept for this once, a brief reply to a letter whose 
kindness calls for one of generous confidence. Absence 
and illness have brought me far in arrear to many corres- 
pondents. 

"I am with great respect, 

"Your humble servant. 

"William H. Seward." 

This letter is endorsed "See N. Y. Tribune for Sept . 
1850, for resolutions of Mr. S." which prove to be a bill to 
abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, with the ap- 
propriation of $200,000 (if necessary) for indemnity, and 
the proviso that unless the bill received the approval of the 
inhabitants within six months it should be void. It is inter- 
esting to remember that these were the same suggestions 
Mr. Miner made more than twenty years before; were they 
the "bold and wise" suggestions of this letter? 

The pamphlet mentioned in the following note. October 
27, 1850, from the once famous Mrs. Sigourney, a fellow- 
native of Norwich, was probably the Washington-Taylor 
speech of the year before : 

"A few hours since, some one left at my door a modc^i 
looking pamphlet, to whose contents was appended your 
well-known and honoured name. It is scarcely necessary 
to write, what would be the experience of every reader 
(Norwich born), that it was not laid down until finished. 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. [65 

nor indeed without a second perusal. It is a perfect picture 
gallery, and as vivid as those in Carlyle's Trench Revolu- 
tion.' You possess the true graphic style, — those short 
spirited sentences, which so few of the literati manage 
well. Moreover there is no winter in your thought, though 
you seem to intimate that your near approach to fourscore, 
is almost a Methuselah date. Now I don't think so at all." 

That Mr. Miner was still a careful and constant reader 
is attested by the following characteristically discreet note 
[May 24, 1852] from the icy author of "Thanatopsis" : 

"It would be affectation in me to say that I am not 
pleased with your favorable opinion of some lines of mine 
lately published. Your commendation is of the sort I most 
highly value, since it does not seem prompted by the mere 
desire to say a civil thing. 

"I am sir, 

"Very respectfully yours, 

"W. C. Bryant." 

President Fillmore, on the death of Daniel Webster 
[October 24, 1852], appointed Mr. Everett his successor as 
secretary of state; he filled the office four months, to the 
end of the administration. Intimately personal, and throw- 
ing new light upon the noble character of their writer, are 
the two following letters to Mr. Miner: 

"Washington, Nov. 15, 1852. 

"My Dear Old Friend: I have yours of the 6th, and 
I assure you that I truly appreciate your kindness. You 
will readily believe that I have not come here with any ex- 
pectation, at the heel of an expiring administration, of doing 
anything considerable; my only hope is to put the depart- 
ment in creditable order to be handed over to my successor, 
on the 4th of March. I have no expectation for the future ; 
political advancement requires an amount of labor, not to 
say drudgery, in the field and on the stump, for which I 
have no strength or taste. I intend to devote the decline of 



1 66 CHARLES MINER, 

my life to the superintendence of the education of the chil- 
dren committed to my charge ; to works of private duty 
(reckoning as the highest duty that of doing good to the 
utmost of our ability) ; and to preparation for that great 
'election' which does not depend on the popular voice 
"I wish you would look in upon us this winter. 

"Yours affectionately, 

"Edward Everett. - ' 

•(Private) " B ° ST0N ' ' 7 J " ly ' l855 ' 

"My own health, greatly impaired last year, is consider- 
ably improved, though far from being robust. I am wholly 
retired from public life, which I have found to be a game 
of violence, fraud, and dupery. I do not mean that all 
politicians use these weapons ; but so many do, that they give 
a character to the Career. 

"Your ancient colleague and friend, 

"Edward Everett/' 

It is interesting to note, in connection with the second 
letter, that considerations of the highest patriotism led Mr. 
Everett to accept, five years later, the vice-presidential 
nomination of the Constitutional Union party, the last at- 
tempt to preserve the Union on lines of Whig conservatism. 

Meanwhile, the first muttering of the war-storm was 
sounding through the valley, and was deeply alarming the 
anti-slavery pioneer of 1826, who was no less the conserva- 
tive patriot of 1855, the year of this letter from the life- 
long abolitionist. William Jay : 

"Bedford, N. V.. Aug. 15, 1855. 

"I was greatly gratified by your remembrance of me, as 
evinced by your letter of the 5th instant, as well as by the 
evidence it afforded that you continue, amid so many de- 
fections, true to the cause of human rights. 

"T regard the times as portentous, threatening not the 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 167 

dissolution of the Union but the destruction of those rights 
which render it worth preserving. The arrogance and vio- 
lence of the slave power, and the meanness, servility, and 
corruption of northern politicians, and most especially of 
the so-called Democratic party, are tending to make our 
whole country 'a land of tyrants and a den of slaves.' The 
Democratic party, as a party, in the language of Scripture, 
neither fears God nor regards man. No sacrifice of 
northern freedom nor of the rights of humanity is, in the 
esteem of this party, too base and wicked to be offered in 
exchange for southern votes and federal office. Among 
the Whigs there are individuals as utterly profligate in these 
respects as Democrats; but they are exceptions, not the 
representatives of the moral character of the mass of the 
Whigs. 

"The usurpations of the federal judiciary, as exhibited in 
the atrocities of Kane and Grier, are alarming symptoms 
of national degeneracy. What is to be done? You have 
suggested, in my opinion, the only possible remedy — a union 
of all opposed to the slave power, without regard to past 
political affinities. How far this is practicable depends 
upon the amount of virtue still left in our northern mem- 
bers of Congress. With your permission, I should like to 
send a copy of a portion of your letter to Mr. Seward and 
Senators Sumner and Wilson. Its suggestions may be use- 
ful to them. * * * 

"At the present time there should be no timidity in the 
expression of anti-slavery sentiments. There never was a 
period when the words of the poet were more applicable: 
'Fear, admitted into public counsels, betrays like treason.' 
* * * 

When four years later, John Brown attempted to abolish 
slavery by the use of a dozen rifles, the old-time abolitionist 
of over thirty years before wrote to Eli K. Price of Phila- 
delphia in no uncertain words: 



n^ I EARLES MINER, 

"Retreat, December 18, 1859. 
"Here over the mountains, in Luzerne, we have 10,000 
voters. I do not believe there is one — I never heard of one 
— so wicked and foolish as to wish the Union to fall. Sev- 
eral years ago, when Chester Butler was our representative 
and the so often recurring war-cry of dissolution was 
raised, I was frightened — absolutely scared, and I wrote to 
him: 'The cry of Disunion sounds like the rattling terrors 
of the vengeful snake. And for Heaven's sake put it 
down at any sacrifice.' The present threat has not 
alarmed me the least. The act of violence and treason of 
old Crazy Brown has alarmed and distressed me. I said at 
once: 'The man is crazy.' The means were so totally and 
palpably inadequate to the proposed end ; they showed as 
complete an aberration of the reasoning faculty as the 
simpleton that should attempt to upset the Blue Mountains 
with a straw * * * nor have I any notion of sympathy with 
old Brown. Cook, or any of the gang. I said at once: 
'Nonsense of his sincerity.' 1 have no idea of a fellow 
going in to a community, scattering firebrands, arrows, and 
death, tiring a magazine or stirring up a servile war. and 
crying: T am a philanthropist ! I go by the Bible!' 1 

Always a steadfast opponent of slavery, but unable to 
follow the impracticabilities of Garrison, John Brown, and 
other advocates of "immediate, unconditional emancipation 
on the soil," Mr. Miner by lifelong conviction, study, and 
political experience, favored methods of emancipation 
which ranked him, as has been seen, with those who were 
called "conservative opponents of slavery." But his moral 
detestation of the "institution," and abhorrence of the tac- 
tics adopted by its extreme supporters, were as deep as 
theirs. A manuscript book of miscellaneous notes, entitled 
Slavery or Freedom, and dated May 30. 1854, leaves no un- 
certain effect in its stinging sentences, such as these: 

" 'Your first duty.' said the emperor Napoleon, 'is to 
me! I am the state!' 'Your first duty.' says the imperial 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 169 

phantom of slaver)- to its vassals, 'is to me! 1 am t he- 
state !" 

"The Missouri Compromise is repealed. 1 tear it will 
be a fatal blow to the Union." 

"Shall the free states cry 'Craven,' swallow the leek, and 
receive the brand ?" 

"Has Gen. Gage arrived at Boston?" 

"Is Lord North reinstated in the ministry?" 

"Is Bunker Hill blown up?" 

"Is Lexington laid desolate, and a lake of oblivion spread 
over her?" 

"Has the Declaration of Independence been burnt by the 
hands of the common hangman?" 

"Are the shackles forged?" 

"Are the sons of the Pilgrim Fathers learning their new 
creed : 'We believe our foolish fathers were mistaken in 
supposing their mission was to establish religion and free- 
dom ; modern light has taught us it was to extend the blessed 
area of human slavery ?' " 

Looking back, after just a quarter of a century, on his 
congressional speech of 1829 concerning slavery in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, Mr. Miner found little gain; for, in these 
notes, he sarcastically inquires: "As Maryland and Vir- 
ginia, with the District of Columbia, pertinaciously insist 
on retaining slavery at the seat of government, — of no use 
to them and so obnoxious to the free states, — would it not 
be polite to let Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the other 
slave states vote what appropriations they may deem proper 
for the use of the District?" Elsewhere in the notes, he 
suggests the advisability of moving the Capital farther 
west. 

Again: "Will the legislatures of the free states firmly 
decline, out of self-respect, to send, or desire the present 1 
tion of, wishes or resolves to this Congress?" 

"Do not the free states stand much in the attitude the 
colonies occupied at the beginning of the Revolution, in 



I/O CHARLES MINER, 

respect to petitions to the king and Lord North's adminis- 
tration ? Have not the humble requests of both been equally 
treated with contempt, or disregarded ?" 

In 1856 he had published a thirty-five page pamphlet en- 
titled "The Olive Branch; or. The Evil and the Remedy." 
It was composed of a Fourth of July address delivered in 
West Chester in 182 1. with later additions, not very 
felicitously put together; but its sincerity of conviction ap- 
pears on every page, while the ability of the older portion, 
at least, is attested by the fact that Chief Justice Marshall, 
at the time of its appearance, caused its republication in a 
Richmond paper. Mr. Miner's "remedy" for the evil of 
slavery which he held to be recognized by the Constitution. 
was the appropriation of $100,000,000 by the general gov- 
ernment for the gradual emancipation of slaves in the border 
states of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Ten- 
nessee, Missouri, and Arkansas, "this money to be appor- 
tioned among the states named, or either of them, which 
shall pass laws in the nature of irrevocable contracts with 
the Federal Government that no person born on or after 
July 4th, 1876, shall be a slave; and that after that day 
slavery shall cease to exist within the limits of the same." 

As for the other slave states, "slavery confined to those 
states whose productions of cotton, rice, and sugar are sup- 
posed to require their [slaves'] labor, all danger to them 
from within or without would cease, and the utmost degree 
of prosperity they are capable of would ensue." The un- 
characteristic weakness of this position is seen at a glance : 
for the rest, he urged that the government place a number 
of large steamers at the disposal of the Colonization Society, 
"the healthful highlands of Africa should be explored and 
purchased ; the colored race be aided home, encouraged, de- 
fended ; * * * civilization, knowledge, Christianity, would 
go in their train ; and that fine country, so susceptible of 
improvement, so long a Paradise Lost, would, under Provi- 
dence, by our and their instrumentality, become a Paradise 
Regained." 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEEk. 171 

If all this, viewed sixty years after, seems sufficiently 
fatuous, let us remember that we too, in the early years of 
the twentieth century, are coming more and more to see 
that war is likely to be more foolish than peace; and that 
it is by no means impossible that certain parts of middle 
Africa will soon rival the extraordinary wealth of South 
Africa, nearly all of which has been developed since Charles 
Miner's day. 

One little sign is all that remains to show that Mr. Miner, 
when the war had actually come, retained his old habit of 
frank suggestion or judicial commendation, in his corres- 
pondence with men in public life; and that suggestion and 
commendation were equally valued by their recipients. It 
is a short note from Gideon Welles, then secretary of the 
navy under Lincoln, to William A. Buckingham, the "war 
governor" of Connecticut : 

"Washington, 24th April, 1862. 

"I am very much gratified with the complimentary re- 
marks of the Hon. Charles Miner, which you were so kind 
as to communicate in your letter of the 18th instant. The 
character of Mr. Miner is well known to me, and I have 
had some slight personal acquaintance with him in former 
years, dating back to the period when he edited the Village 
Record and was a representative for the double or triple 
district of Lancaster, Chester, and Delaware, with James 
Buchanan. His great experience and accurate and discrim- 
inating observations make his commendation able indeed, 
and I appreciate it most fully." 

But the hurly-burly of politics was not the only thing 
that occupied his mind in his old age. As so often before, 
he turned a prophet's vision to the practical needs of tin 
country. To Congressman Hendrick B. Wright he wrote. 
March 22, 1854: 

"My old eyes only catch glimpses of what is going on 
in the world, so that I almost belong to the party of 'know- 
nothings' ; but I think sometimes, if I had a seat there, 



172 I HARLES MINER, 

and possessed \uur powerful elocution, 1 would carefully 
prepare a speech of an hour; arouse the attention of the 
House from the seeming waste of time to the national, all- 
important matter: The Rail Road to the Pacific — indis- 
pensable in peace or war, for commerce or defence, for 
settlement and civilization of the vast world of the west." 

There are to-day [191 5] eight railroads from ocean to 
ocean. 

Looking back on his own life when past the mezzo cam- 
uiiii of Dante, Charles Miner estimated its success and 
failure with the impartiality of an outsider. A stray leaf 
from a "Common Place Book" dated November 1, 1843, 
preserves some thoughts suggested by reading Boswell's 
Life of Johnson, of which one is specially interesting: "I 
do think Boswell's character of Goldsmith's mind is a just 
representation of my own: 'His mind resembled a fertile 
but thin soil. There was a quick but not a strong vegeta- 
tion, of whatever chanced to be thrown upon it. The oak 
of the forest did not grow 7 there, but (rather exaggerated) 
the elegant shrubbery and the fragrant parterres appeared 
in gay succession.' " In 1844 ne began his autobiography 
by these dispassionate words : 

"Tuesday, May 7, 1844. — Commenced this sketch of my 
life. Checkered it certainly has been, as whose is not; 
vicissitudes common to all I have experienced, and yet in no 
remarkable degree. Joy and sorrow, prosperity and ad- 
versity have mingled in my cup, but not in excessive pro- 
portions. On the whole, my voyage down the stream of 
life has been comparatively smooth, and happier than falls 
to the common lot. At the age of sixty-four I look back not 
on disappointment, the scene filled with regrets and tinged 
with melancholy, but many a sunny hour springs to recol- 
lection, and the retrospect is, in the main, cheerful and sat- 
isfactory." 

"Vain would be the attempt to make myself out," says 
a later passage, "a great man. My true position I well 
understand — respectable for talents and character, in the 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. [73 

middle rank of life. Had my early sehooling been better, 
especially had I received the training, the mental discipline, 
of a collegiate and professional education, so as to have 
given solidity, self-possession, and polish to the talents 
nature had endowed me with, I might have made my way 
several steps ahead in public life. * * * To the character 
of philanthropist and clever fellow, anxious to promote the 
best interests of his fellow-men, 1 assert a just claim. Im- 
prisonment for debt, now throughout the United States 
almost universally repudiated and condemned, was, when I 
was a young man, and had previously been, not only the 
law of the land but almost unquestioned as a moral code or 
Christian regulation. In 1806 I published a column of 
rhyme [on the subject]. If this and some other efforts to 
abolish that barbarous custom had some slight effect to- 
wards accomplishing the benign object, so far I should 
not have lived in vain :" 

"Where Susquehanna journeying to the main, 
Wyoming's fertile fields divide in twain, 
Lies a small village, little known to fame, 

From Wilkes and Barre that derives its name. 

****** 

"A little onward, rising to the view, 
A public mansion's seen, of stone, and new ; 
As you approach the gates of iron tell 
Its awful name 'the sons of sorrows cell ;' 
So the harsh creditor for sordid pelf, 
Tears the fond husband from his dearer self. 

*t* "r *F •r "r * 

"Relentless lure his fellow man confines, 
Who robbed of every joy in sorrow pines." 
He urges the "Sons of Freedom" who fought for national 
liberty to 

" * * * take the name of tyrants, or no more 
Punish a fellow man for being poor." 

— Lucerne Federalist, May 9th, 1806. 



174 <HARI.ES MIXER, 

Xo less ardent but in much better literary style, is a 
prose plea on the same subject in one of the John Harwood 
papers, in the Village Record for June 16, 1819: "If a man 
steal your horse how is he punished? By imprisonment. 
If a man governed by the passions of a demon, sets fire to 
your house, how do your laws punish him? By imprison- 
ment. And if a man perfectly innocent, by the change of 
times and fluctuations of trade be reduced to poverty — 
what is his punishment? Imprisonment! Imprisonment 
for debt and imprisonment for crime confounds all distinc- 
tions and violates, 1 conceive, the soundest principles of 
policy and justice." 

Xo part of the encomium passed upon him, after his 
death, by the veteran journalist, John W. Forney, of Phil- 
adelphia, would have pleased Mr. Miner so much as the 
last: "Charles Miner was a model journalist and states- 
man, the father of a school of sound thinkers, and the most 
practical philanthropist of his time." 

This philanthropy, like Abraham Lincoln's, was based 
upon a deep inner conviction rather than glib external pro- 
testation. In his religious belief he sympathized with the 
Presbyterian church, but was never a member of it. No 
more satisfactory summary of his views could be asked 
than that given in a letter to his lifelong friend, Eli K. 
Price, of Philadelphia : "I am deeply interested in the vast 
and sublime theme of our immortal nature. 1 cordiallv 
agree with you, if there be not a life immortal, and the 
great doctrines of Christianity be not true, then is life 
without fruits and creation purposeless." 

In his old age at the "Retreat" as he called his Wyoming 
home (the word not suggesting to his mind its later associ- 
ations), he lived a long, simple, happy, helpful life with 
nature, his friends, his books and his memories, but with 
gradually decaying powers. Long before, in a letter to his 
wife, he had spoken of himself as "the little grayhaired 
fellow who takes your arm to feed the chickens," apparentlv 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 175 

not fearing the too prophetic warning of a candid friend 
who wrote to him : "Don't let your mind rust out with the 
pigs and the chickens." The "cot beneath the Sycamore" 
was not only a gathering place for a large number of rela- 
tives and friends, but, as has been seen, a place of pious pil- 
grimage. 

Sometimes a simple anecdote is a true revealer of char- 
acter, and a number of these, as they have arisen in the 
minds of his descendants and others, may form a fitting 
close for this sketch. His daughter Ellen's memories have 
been often quoted. She used to say that his sincerity led 
to very definite views with regard to the personal apparel 
of his wife and daughters. Several times in his letters 
from Washington, he expressed disapproval of women 
flaunting ostrich plumes on their heads ; he did not want 
them to use any kind of perfumery, and disliked very much, 
to have them wear an old afternoon dress for their morning 
work. A lady, he said, was much more a lady in a simple 
print frock for the morning. All of which suggests Rus- 
kin's teaching, later, that to be sincere in character, from 
the inside out, one must also be sincere in dress. 

Often he would go out to see the sun rise and quote : 

"Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops." 

To the end of his life his favorite supper was the mush 
and milk of his early days by the Wyalusing ; but after 
this simple meal he used to like to sit at the table and talk, 
says his grand-daughter, Emily R. Miner, who took the 
chief care of him in his very last days, until he would ex- 
claim : "Em wants to clear up and make it ship-shape and 
bristol fashion." 

Several stories have been told to Mrs. Oliver by the 
daughter of a woman who used to work in Mr. Miner's 
family ; though not of himself, one that he would like to 
have recorded, is, that when the maid was terrified at a 



I76 < 11ARLES MINER, 

thunder-storm, his hlind daughter, Sarah, said she was "glad 
to worship a God who made such a beautiful sound"! 

"One day some one came to borrow their brass preserv- 
ing kettle and for some reason they could not have it, so 
Grand-father went to town, bought one, and took it to them, 
only telling them to bring it back when through with it, so 
he could have it to lend to the next one. Grand-mother 
was puzzled at the mysteriously rapid disappearance of 
little cakes she made, till she found he would fill his pockets, 
and go out to 'make the children happy.' " Mrs. Oliver 
adds : "The only thing I remember worth telling of Grand- 
father is this: I was sitting on his lap eating an apple and 
threw the core into the fire, and he said, 'My child, never 
throw anything in the fire that any living creature can eat.' " 

Through the memory of Miss Simpson, Mrs. Thomas' 
loving companion and nurse for many years, comes another 
story of the habitual generosity of the family. After one 
of the good Christmas dinners such as are recorded in the 
account book, Mr. Miner said to his wife: "Letitia. I feel 
as if we ought to go see Granny Worden, and take 
her something." So they told Jacob to hitch the horse to 
the sleigh, packed a basket of good things such as they 
been having for dinner, and drove to the house at the edge 
of a wood, to find that the daughter had said : "Mother, we 
ain't got a maouthful of food in the house." To which 
"Granny" had replied: "Don't worry, daughter, the Lord 
will provide." The next morning Mr. Miner sent them 
potatoes, a barrel of flour and a load of coal. 

Here and there are recalled incidents showing his sym- 
pathy for his fellow creatures, other than human, to which 
must be added the memory that one severe winter he 
devoted a room in the house to the birds, carefully feeding 
those that sought refuge there. 

A vivid personal memory of his grand-daughter, Mrv 
W. M. F. Round, is of his sitting by a window, in his big 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 1 77 

chair, telling her of the loveliness and beauty of her grand- 
mother. He would ask for her picture from a drawer 
near by, would look at it, kiss it tenderly, and then have 
her put it carefully back; while his grandson, Isaac M. 
Thomas, remembers his grace of manner, not only to his 
friends, but that on meeting an old Irish woman on the 
street he would doff his hat with a courtly sweep and the 
Irish greeting : "Goide mar ta tu" — "God be with you." 

It has been said of him that he had a poetical quotation 
ready to fit every occasion, and from his daughter Mary's 
daughter, Mrs. James McKeen, comes a group of memories 
illustrating this habit : "My recollection of our Grand- 
father is of a dignified yet gracious personality. He al- 
ways greeted us children with some playful remark, often 
some quotation from his loved poets apropos to our occu- 
pation or personal condition. 

"I was playing chess with a young man whose visits did 
not wholly please my grandfather, and the evening having 
advanced to the seemly hour of nine, he entered the room, 
and with a courteous gesture of salutation began : 

'Too late I stayed — forgive the crime ! 

Unheeded flew the hours : 
How noiseless falls the foot of Time 

That only treads on flowers.' 

"It is needless to add the young man quickly retired. 
Grandfather liked to take a nap in the evening by the big 
blazing grate fire. One evening he suddenly wakened, and 
probably had dreamed some vivid dream, for he plumped his 
chair sharply on the floor and looking round began : 

Tor who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, 
This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned. 

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day. 
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind ?' 

Mrs. McKeen also says : "He told me of Mrs. Sigournev 
and how he had jumped the broomstick with her when they 



178 I SABLES MINER, 

were boy and girl together [in Norwich]. His children 
and grandchildren dearly loved him. and with a love and 
pride which, as I now look back upon it, after sixty years, 
seems to me exceedingly rare among the children of men." 

Another picture of his personality in his last years as given 
in a letter by his granddaughter, Mrs. William H. Sturde- 
vant [July 21, 1913] to another granddaughter, Mrs. 
Charles F. Richardson, is so vivid that it must be quoted 
entire, even if repeating a little: 

"I well remember the stately and dignified presence of 
Grandfather Miner, and how we children felt that he was 
one to be treated with great respect and consideration. I 
don't know what his height was. but to me he looked quite 
tall and handsome, with a beautiful white curl lying on his 
shoulder. Mother grew to look like him, and [Charles F. 
Richardson] is much the same style of man, more so than 
any of his grandsons. 

"He was very much interested in our education — that we 
should form right literary habits. He encouraged us to 
learn poetry by heart, and rewarded us with the gift of a 
new dress for learning Gray's Elegy. I was to learn it all 
because I was oldest, the rest of you a few verses accord- 
ing to your years; you being a little thing, had probably 
only two or three. 

"He used to write formal letters of invitation for me to 
dine with him. lie was given to making complimentary 
speeches to the ladies; I remember some one saying: 'Girls, 
here comes Mr. Miner: now we'll all hear how pretty we 
are.' 

"He was a very early riser; by four or rive o'clock on a 
winter morning he might be found reading or writing by a 
glowing coal fire in a big grate, Aunt Sarah beside him. 
He read aloud to her whatever he wrote or whatever he 
was reading for himself ; and you remember it was said that 
as he drove about the valley visiting the survivors of the 
massacre to get his information for the history, she went 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 179 

with him to hear for him and retail to him what he wanted 
of their long stories. You know he called the home where 
he spent his last years 'Retreat' ; I suppose because he had 
retired from the world and its business and imagined him- 
self to be a farmer. He had chairs carried out to the field ; 
took Aunt Sarah with him ; and they sat together husking 
corn, and talking, I suppose of the history and literature of 

past ages. 

"He was often spoken of as a man a hundred years ahead 
of his time, [and less politely as 'crazy Charles Miner') 
for he was full of ideas as to the future of the valley, and 
sometimes prophesied respecting the developments that 
might be expected. You remember how beautiful the 
junction of Mill Creek and Laurel Run used to be — almost 
like a lake? He did not doubt but that some day there 
might be boats upon the water ; and shortly after his death 
a boat appeared there— a canal boat ; indeed it lay there as 
his funeral crossed the bridge. * * * 

"[Now] I must tell you about his geese. I don't be- 
lieve you remember them, for he had geese and taught 
them to dance for their food while he whistled the horn- 
pipe ; I don't know how he managed to teach them, but I 
know he was above the use of hot plates. [Mrs. Richard- 
son remembers being told that once he was surprised and 
grieved to find his pet goose dancing idiotically until it 
dropped dead, having eaten pumpkin seeds that had been 
spread to dry, and had fermented.] 

"One morning when mother was very young, she and 
Aunt Sarah were up unusually early. Mother went wild 
over a rain of stars. Of course Aunt Sarah could not see 
that it was anything extraordinary, and thought it was only 
that mother was not accustomed to the early morning sky, 
so she did not tell Grandfather the sky was falling, and hi? 
distress was great, when the reports began to reach him 
from the astronomical world, to think how narrowly he had 
missed the wonderful sight. 



l8o VKLES MINER, 

"He enjoyed having his friends about him, and enter- 
tained liberally and graciously. Sally Slabach came to 
make mince pies and apple-butter, and to roast turkeys, and 
all that belonged to that rite, preparing for a family Thanks- 
giving dinner; he watched actively to be sure all were well 
served and appreciated the good things, but he ate sparingly, 
perhaps pouring a glass of wine for a friend and setting his 
own glass in the corner cupboard, where it remained un- 
disturbed, which was as near as he came to obeying Dr. 
Miner's injunction : 'Now, Uncle Charles, you must drink 
wine to keep up your strength,' and you know mother said 
he braved the indignation of his friends, while they were 
living in West Chester, by being one of the first to take 
liquor off of his sideboard. In the days that I remember he 
was the only important member of the family, called upon 
by all important strangers and home people, of course. I 
never in later years saw Judge Conyngham's daughter, Mrs. 
Parrish, when praise of him was not the principal topic of 
her conversation — his dignity, graciousness of manner, and 
handsome face and figure were never forgotten. 

"Do you remember the pretty note Judge Conyngham 
wrote asking permission to name his little son for Grand- 
father ? 

" 'There is something in a name,' he wrote, 'and as 
yet my little infant has none — I want him to have one which 
may be to him an example of good, one of which he may 
hereafter be proud and which at the same time may gratify 
the friendship of his parents — May we call him 'Charles 
Miner'? I trust he will never disgrace it. 

'truly yr friend 
'John N. Conyngham 

"Monday 27th July.' 
"I often wished that mother and Aunt Sarah had had a 
habit of talking more about their father, Charles, and 
mother, Letitia. Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Beaumont told me 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 1&I 

the most 1 ever heard about grandmother, her sweet voice, 
beauty, and literary taste. 

"I suppose I ought to remember more clearly than I do 
about Grandfather; we lived in his house from the time 
Nellie was three months old till about your birthday. "He 
called grandmother 'Lete' and her name is mine." 

[To the above letter of Judge Conyngham, Mr. Miner 
thus replied:] 

Hon. John N. Conyngham, 

My Dear Friend, 

Your kind note of the 27th 
slept in my Brother's pocket till 3 this afternoon. 

I cannot express to you the pride and pleasure the prop- 
osition to name your son after me, awakened in my breast. 
To obtain the favorable opinion of the wise and good has 
been with me one of the strongest incentives to action 
through life, and a manifestation of it, more flattering and 
agreeable could not have taken place. 

But, with my prayers for, and my Blessings on, the boy, 
let me beg of you, while you call him Charles, that, for the 
middle name you substitute another than mine. The early 
loss of a lovely child named fully after me, by my excellent 
friends John and Sybilla Townsend, leads me tremblingly 
to fear, where I should dearly love, and causes the judgment 
to disapprove the earnest wish. 

With the truest esteem 

Your obliged friend 

T , iU o (signed) Charles Miner. 

July 29th, 1840. * ' 

Leaving a request that his body be buried in the old grave- 
yard, where "the mould was soft and pleasant," and he 
would be "surrounded by old friends," Charles Miner died 
at his home October 26, 1865. Here he was laid, but on the 
abandonment of the burying ground he was moved to the 
cemetery by the river, where he lies at the top of the hill, 
his grave being marked, according to his expressed wish, by 



1 82 CHARLES MIXER. 

a monument of native stone. His health had long been feeble ; 
indeed, as far back as 1845, ne na( i professed his in- 
ability to walk without great pain in a masonic funeral ; and 
the expression used by him in his letter seems to indicate 
that the weakness was not temporary. In 1855 ne declared 
himself "too deaf to hear his friends without exertion by 
them in loud speaking." But to the last he was the punctil- 
ious gentleman described by his granddaughter, of singular 
benignity and courtesy of manners ; a kindly, suggestive, 
but not strenuous or egotistic talker ; and one who radiated 
an atmosphere of winning friendship. Hon. Eli K. Price 
wrote to Mr. Miner's daughter, Ellen, November 10, 1878: 
"They cannot know, who never saw him, the perfection of 
his genial nature, his bland courtesy, his kindly politeness 
and amenity, that sprang from his loving heart. Erom what 
they may read they can judge he had a cultivated intellect, a 
most refined taste, and the fine imagination of the poet, but 
all the results of superior natural gifts." 

In a commemorative address Mr. Price wrote : "I am 
reminded by a quotation made in one of his letters written 
many years ago, that he acted through life with a view 
unto the end : 'Oh, that the winding up may be well.' Sel- 
dom do we look upon one so good and perfect in character 
as was he of whom we now write. We rejoice that he com- 
pleted so perfect an example for his fellowmen." 
Of the other tributes one only may be added : 
"He was easy and winning in manners ; scrupulously neat 
and precise in his dress, (and always a flower in his but- 
tonhole, if he could rind nothing but a hollyhock), cour- 
teous in demeanor to all who approached him ; open and 
generous with his purse, even to his own detriment ; and 
a lover of all those noble qualities which help to make up 
the true and honest man. In conversation he was peculiarly 
agreeable — no tongue more eloquent than his, so smooth in 
compliment, so polished its language: and it is doubtful if 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER 183 

anyone ever left his presence without a feeling of self satis- 
faction and of pleasure for the interview. He never lost a 
friend — at least not by fault of his own. All who knew him 
intimately loved him dearly." E. Bowman Miner in 
Record of the Times, Nov. 8, 1865. 

One Sunday, as late as 1885, attracted by his charming 
personality, and fine sermon, Mrs. Oliver, then living in 
New Jersey, invited a visiting clergyman, Mr. Edwin Rein- 
hart, home to dinner. On returning to the room after a 
moment's absence she found him standing before her grand- 
father's picture with the tears streaming down his cheeks. 
"Mrs. Oliver," he said, "did you mean to spring it on me?" 
Bewildered, she said : "Spring what"? "Did you mean to 
spring it on me? Why Charles Miner was almost my best 
friend ; his brother, Asher, was my best friend." Then 
he told her of having worked in their office, and of its hav- 
ing been Asher's influence that turned him to the ministry. 

Very recently the daughter of an old friend has spoken 
of her vivid memory of the beautiful picture Charles Miner 
made when walking immediately behind the hearse of a 
venerable associate, his hat in his hand and his white hair 
floating in the breeze. Once seen, he was seldom forgot- 
ten. Even in his dress he suggested, by his ruffled shirt 
front and white cravat, the "gentleman of the old school" : 
and all who knew him, in old age, bear uniform testimony 
to the almost unique impression left by the snowy head, 
aquiline nose, eye undimmed by age, and kindly ways of 
him who, having begun life as a pioneer, ended it as a 
sage. 

THE END. 



T84 



CHARLES MINER, 



Referring back to page 105, where Mr. William Rawle, in 
his letter of January 14, 1829, expresses the hope that Mr. 
Miner's efforts to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia 
would not be lost sight of", the Editor adds : 

This hope of Mr. Rawle's has hardly been fulfilled ; many 
writers of the history of his time in congress ignoring Mr. 
Miner entirely; this is true even of some who have devoted 
themselves to the study of the anti-slavery movement. In- 
deed it is rather hard to avoid the feeling that fate has 
worked against his due recognition. Misprints, wrong 
dates, omissions in indices and in congressional reports, etc., 
pursue him. In a large public library the small matter of 
the date of his birth was wrong until a short time ago; 
the date on one of the volumes of the Journal of the House 
accessible to the present writer was insufficient, and a 
wrong date in the text of that volume combined with omis- 
sions in the official reports to cause a long, laborious search 
through unofficial papers for facts that should have been 
easily at the trained student's disposal. Of a dozen cyclo- 
pedias examined only one gives a satisfactory sketch, and 
there is a slip in it. Even the accurate Bartlett. in his 
"Familiar Quotations," at first accredited "An Axe to 
Grind,' to Benjamin Franklin. In the index of an unalpha- 
betized biographical dictionary his name appears, but the 
pagination is wrong, and the item unfindable. Inaccuracy 
and omissions in the index of John Quincy Adams' Diary 
required a hunt to find several pleasant allusions, some of 
which are quoted. 

Also, in his account of the "five ark-loads" of anthracite 
coal starting from Mauch Chunk. McMaster makes no men- 
tion of the senders, but tells the story of the man who 
slammed the stove door only to come back to a red-hot fire 
a little differently from the form family tradition has kept 
it for this memoir — perhaps his is the more accurate version 
of this trivial point. 

The feeling of the House, too. that made it so difficult 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. 1 85 

for one of Mr. Miner's genial nature to persist, year by 
year in his self imposed task, has not been understood. A. B. 
Hart, editor of and writer for the American Nation, says: 
"Till 1830 there seems to have been no notion that slavery 
was a question which must not be discussed in congress." 
(Vol. 16, P. 164), while Von Hoist says: "It was not until 
the next session, when Heister of Pennsylvania (Feb. 4, 
1833), handed in a petition of the same tenor [as that of 
Mr. Miner in 1828], that the first traces of disquietude on 
the part of the south over this agitation showed them- 
selves." Mason, of Virginia, said that "thus a course had 
been entered upon the end of which would be the abolition 
of slavery in the United States" (Vol. 2, P. 236), which 
was exactly what Charles Miner hoped for when he offered 
his first resolution on May 13th, 1826. 

Again, as to leadership in the movement, James Freeman 
Clarke, Anti-Slavery Days, P. 40, says : "Passing over these 
preliminary skirmishes [of Josiah Quincy and Tristram 
Burgess of Rhode Island 1825-35] we come down to 1835, 
when the real battle commenced on the floor of congress. 
* * * Then came to the front a man— John Quincy 
Adams." While John T. Morse, in his Life of John 
Quincy Adams in the American Statesman series, P. 190, 
says: ' "It is possible now to see plainly that Mr. Adams 
was really the leader in the long crusade against slavery." 

Forgetting all the work by the opposers of slavery from 
its beginning it is common to read, in many histories. 111 
varied words, the statement even the careful Rhodes puts 
into this form: "While this controversy was going on, 
William Lloyd Garrison began the abolition movement by 
the establishment of the Liberator at Boston. January 1st. 

1 83 1." 

If limited by some such qualifying phrase as "extreme 
radical" movement, or by Von Hoist's careful distinction 
that the early anti-slavery societies were humanitarian. 



l86 CHARLES MINER, 

while the abolition movement was political, this is true, or 
would be if it were not for the quaker, Lundy. 

Returning to the question of the recognition of Mr. Miner's 
work on the floor of the house, we rind that with one excep- 
tion the historians ignore the resolutions of the first two 
years, while several mention the petition of 1828, and the 
resolutions of 1829. 

Henry Wilson's "Slave Power in America," has already 
been quoted in the text. A. B. Hart, in The American 
Nation, says (Vol. 16, P. 165) : "The abolitionists opened 
up a good point of attack against slavery in the District of 
Columbia. About 1828, Miner of Pennsylvania made him- 
self the leader of the movement, introducing petitions and 
bills for the gradual emancipation in the District." 

W. O. Blake in his "History of Slavery and the Slave 
Trade," summarizes the 1828 petition signed by 1000 resi- 
dents of the District (House Document 215), adding "A 
stronger anti-slaver)' document has not in later years been 
presented to congress ; nor did it receive any more efficient 
action than similar petitions have since received." 

Von Hoist quotes this petition in a note, and says "Here 
(District of Columbia ) slavery could be abolished by law 
at any moment [some still honestly thought it could not). 
Therefore not only the abolitionists but also more moderate 
opponents of slavery were convinced it should be done with- 
out delay. The matter was frequently agitated in congress. 
On the 6th of January, 1829, Miner of Pennsylvania moved 
the appointment of a committee which was, among other 
things, to 'inquire into the expediency of providing by law 
for the gradual abolition of slavery in the District.' The 
House rejected the cutting arguments advanced in favor of 
the motion." (History of the United States, Vol. 2, P. 235.) 

But it remained for McMustcr to trace each step, and do 
Mr. Miner full justice. He says: "Petitions were pre- 
sented from time to time praying for the abolition of slav- 
ery in the District, but it was not till Charles Miner of 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. l8/ 

Pennsylvania became a member, that the existence of slav- 
ery and the slave trade was attacked in serious earnest by 
the introduction of resolutions which the House refused to 
consider. The attention which Mr. Miner could not secure 
in May [May 13, 1826, when it will be remembered he was 
refused a hearing amid great excitement J was readily se- 
cured in December, 1826, at the beginning of the second 
session of the 19th congress." 

Again, first session of the 20th congress, 1828: "One 
of the petitions [which Mr. Miner prepared, as has been 
seen,] bore the signatures of 1000 inhabitants of the 
District, but neither the number of signatures, nor the 
number of petitions, nor the sources from whence they 
came availed anything. The House went through the decent 
form of referring them to the committee for the District. 
The committee reported a bill that was not considered, and 
the petitioners, nothing discouraged, besieged the 20th con- 
gress during its second session, with the same energy 
with which they beset the first. The cause, moreover, 
again found a champion in Mr. Miner, who forced the 
House to action by resolutions of his own. An effort was 
made to strike out the preamble, member after member de- 
clared he was willing to vote for the enquiry, but had 
never heard of many of the allegations. Mr. Miner there- 
fore proceeded to prove them." 

McMaster then gives a full summary of this 1829 pre- 
amble and series of resolutions and speech, so similar to the 
one in this sketch as to suggest to the reader that one was 
taken from the other, instead of both being from the 
original. McMaster adds : 'The House instructed the com- 
mittee to make the proposed enquiry, which proved as 
fruitless as any that had gone before. The committee re- 
plied 'that this constant agitation must sooner or later be 
productive of serious mischief, if not danger to the peace 
and harmony of the Union and was greatly to be regretted. 
False hopes of liberty were held out to the slaves, exciting 



l88 CHARLES MINER, 

them to insubordination, and creating a restlessness for 
emancipation incompatible with the existing state of the 
country. It upheld housing slaves of dealers in public 
prisons. * * * Abolition of the slave trade was most im- 
politic. It was best to let the matter rest.' " But "a few 
evils resulting from the quartering of large numbers of 
slaves in the city for a long time did need correction, and 
this was provided for in a bill which died in committee of 
the whole." 

It hardly seems as if the work could be called "fruitless" 
that caused one reluctant committee to bring in a bill re- 
pealing the objectionable laws of the District, and another 
to offer such a frightened retort. Rather, to revert to Mr. 
Rawle's mixed figures, it seems as if Mr. Miner had cause 
to feel satisfied with the effect of his "entering wedge," his 
"foundation." Even though "nothing effectual" was done 
that session and slavery was not abolished in the District of 
Columbia until 1862 (when 3000 slaves were freed at the 
price of $300 a piece) who shall say how much they helped 
to produce the "serious mischief" of later years? 

"Since this was in print it has been found that Mr. Meigs 
renewed his resolutions in a somewhat modified form 
(chiefly by proposing gradual emancipation by purchase) 
on February 15. 182 1. Tabled by vote of 66 to 55." 



A PENNSYLVANIA PIONEER. [89 

CHARLES MINER'S FAMILY. 

Charles Miner, born at Norwich, Conn., Feb. 1, 1780; died 

at Plains Township. Pa., Oct. 26, 1865. 
Letitia Wright, born at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., June 8, 1788; 

married Charles Miner, Jan. 16, 1804; died at Plains 

Township, Pa., Feb. 27, 1852. 

CHILDREN : 

Ann Charlton, born at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Oct. 24, 1804; 
married Dr. Isaac Thomas, of West Chester, Pa. ; died 
at West Chester, Pa., Mar. 23, 1832. 

Sarah Kirkbride, born at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., June 4, 1806; 
died at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Jan. 14, 1874. 

Mary Sinton, born at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., July 16, 1808; 
married Joseph Jackson Lewis, of West Chester, Pa , 
died at West Chester, Pa., Oct. 2y, i860. 

Charlotte, born at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., June 30, 1810; mar- 
ried Stephen Fuller Abbott, of Plains Township, Pa. ; 
died at Plains Township, Pa., July 28, 1859. 

Letitia Wright, born at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., 1812; died at 
Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Aug. 14, 1813. 

Ellen Elizabeth, born at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Aug. 14, 1814; 
married Jesse Thomas, of West Chester, Pa.; died at 
Laurel Run, Pa., Mar. 25, 1913, in her 99th year. 

William Penn. born at Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Sept. 8, 1816; 
married Elizabeth Dewart Liggett, of West Chester, 
Pa. ; died at Miner's Mills (formerly Plains Township). 
Pa., April 3, 1892. 

Francis Cope, born at West Chester, Pa., May 12. 1818; 
died at West Chester, Pa., Sept. 6, 1820. 

Emily Hollenback, born at West Chester, Pa., Aug. 12. 
1821 ; died at West Chester, Pa.. Aug. 27, 1822. 

Charles Townsend, born at West Chester, Pa., Dec. 19, 
1823 ; died at West Chester, Pa., Feb. 23, 1824. 



190 



CHARLES MINER, 



MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE OF CHARLES MINER 
AND LETITIA WRIGHT. 

This is to certify that on the sixteenth day of January 

A. D. one thousand eight hundred and four Before me 

William Rofs one of the Justices of the Peace for the 

County of Luzerne — Charles Miner and Letitia Wright of 

Wilkesbarre Having the consent of friends and no objection 

appearing were Legally joined in marriage — In Witneis 

whereof the said Charles and Letitia (she assuming the 

name of her said Husband) as I the said William Ross, and 

other the W r itnefses Present, have hereunto subscribed our 

names the day and year aforesaid 

Charles Miner 



Letitia Miner 



W m - Rofs 
Josephine Wright 
Sarah Wright 
Jesse Fell 
Thomas Wright 
Hannah Fell 
Nancy Miner 
Asher Miner 
Mary Miner 
Will m Wright 
Sarah Ann Wright 
Josiah Wright (Seal) 
Nathan Palmer 
Rufha Palmer 
William Caldwell 
Jane Caldwell 
Sidney Tracy 
Edwin Tracy 
Steuben Butler 
John Twiesdale 
Sally Wright 



Ezekiel Hyde 
Thomas Welles 
John Robinson 
Isaac Bowman 
Jon a - Balkeley 
Laura Anibal 
Charlotte Schott 
Hanna Wright 
Mary Gordon 
Jane Ely — 
Harriott Welles 
Nancy Butler 
Eliza Nafs 
Ben. Perry 
Mary Perry 
Mary Nelson 
Sarah Ingham 
Sally Ann Wright 
Annamaria Miner 



INDEX. 



Abbott, Charlotte, see Miner, Charlotte. 

Abbott, Fuller, 154. 

Abbott, Miss, 154. 

Abbott, Mr., 154- 

Aberdeen, Lord, 161. 

Abolition, see Slavery. 

Adams, John, 59, 130. 

Adams, John Quincy, 8;, 83, 84, 85, 
87, 96, 106, 107, 118, 119, 122, 128, 
U9, 130, 131, 132. '35. 137. Hi. 
145, 146, 184, 185. 

Adams, Mrs. John Quincy, 107, 114. 

Adams, Mrs. 154. 

Adams, Young Mr., 1 19. 

Ames, Fisher, 34. 

Anibal, Laura, 190. 

Anheuser, Henry C 20. 

Anti-Masonry Agitation, 138-41, 144-40. 

Aspinwall, Mr., 86. 

Ax to Grind, 56. 

Bailey, Mr. Jeremiah. 78. 

P.aily, Captain, 154. 

Balkeley, Jona., 190. 

Bancroft, Hon. Mr., 160, [61. 

Barbour, Gov. James, 119. 

Barlow. Joel, 14. 

Barre. Col. Isaac, 173. 

Bartlett, John, 184. 

Beatrice, 28. 

Beaumont, Hon. Andrew, 160. 

Beaumont, Mrs. Andrew, 180. 

Bell, John, 104, 105. 

Bennett, Z., 151. 

Biddle, Nicholas, 78, 79, 121. 

Bird, Mr. J., 71. 

Bird, James, 67-76. 

Bird, Ballad of, 68-71. 

"Blackberry, Billy," 35- 

Blackstone, 27, 40, 54. 

Blake, VV. O.. 186. 

'•Bob," 21. 

Bonaparte, Napoleon, 33, 42, 168. 

Boswell, Charles, 153. 

Boswell, James, 172. 

Bowkley, Joel, 66. 

Bowman, Lawyer Ebenezcr, 22, 25, 27. 

Bowman, Hamilton, Mrs., 157. 

Bowman, Isaac, Col., 190. 

Bowman. Capt. S., 25. 

Rradlev, Capt. Abraham, 57. 

Bradley. Dr., 83. 

Brent, William Lee, 96, 97, 123. 

Bfrintonl, Cousin S., 124. 

Brinton, Miss Mary, 153. 

Brack, 72. 

Brockett, Dr. L. P.. 86. 

Brooks, Preston S., 117. 

Brown, Gen., 119. 

Brown, Goold. 94. 

Brown, John, 167, 168. 

Brown, Mr., 26. 

Rronson, Enos, 34. 



Bryant, VV. C, 18, 165. 
Buchanan, James, 80, 83, 85, 109, 

126, 171. 
Buckingham, William A., 171. 
Bulkley, Jonathan, 190. 
Bullman, see Miner, Henry. 
Burgess, Tristram, 185. 
Burr, Aaron, 32. 
Bushnell, Ebenezcr, 11, 12. 
Butler, Chester Pierce, 13.'. 168. 
Butler, Col. John, 161. 
Butler, Gen. Lord, 25. 
Butler, Miss Lydia, 25. 
Butler, Mrs. Sarah Hollenback, 132. 
Butler, Nancy, 25, 190. 
Butler, Steuben, Mr., 24, 47, 54, 55, 

58, i90._ 
Butler. William, Esq., 153. 
Butler, William, Mrs., 153, 160. 

Cahoon, George, 24. 
Caldwell, Jane, 190. 
Caldwell, William, 190. 
Calhoun. John C 81. 
Carey, Matthew, 37, 38. 
Carkhuff, Mr., 71. 
Carlyle, Thomas. 165. 
Carpenter, Isaac, 26. 
Cass, Gov., 109, 112, 160. 
Chesterton, G. K., 58. 
Cist, Jacob, 60, 61, 62, 64, 98. 
Chandler, J. R., 160. 
Chapman. Isaac A., 76, 158. 
Chapman, Lydia, Miss, 13. 
Charlton. Anna, 30. 
Chase, Mr. John, 13, 1?. 
Chauncey, Elihu, 34. 
"Christian.'* C51. 
Clark, Judge, 121. 
Clarke, James Freeman, 146, 185. 
Clay, Henry, 81, 82, 88 note. 96, 106, 
108, 117, 119- 120, 121. 122. 137- 

139, 147- 
Clayton. Mr.. 151. 
Clinton, DeWitt. 1 17. 
Clizbe, Ira, 94. 
Coal, Mauch Chunk, to Philadelphia. 

(,0-66. 
Coleman, William, 34. 
Colt, Arnold, 36. 
Colte, Charles, 151. 
' olte, Fuller, 151. 
Congress, Years in, 85- 129. 
Connecticut Claims, 12-19, 43- 
Constitution, Support of, 52, 116, 117. 

119, 159. 
Conyngham, Tudge John N\. 162, i8n. 

181. 
Cook, John E., 168. 
Cook, Mr. Daniel P., 108. 
Cooper. Thomas A.. 36. 
Cooper, Judge Thomas. 38-43. 
Cranch. Chief Justice. 100. 



\g2 



INDEX. 



Crawford, Mr. W. II.. 82. 
Crissy, J., 1 57- 
Croswell, Harry. 34. 
Cushing, Caleb, Gen., 161, 163. 

Dana, Amasa. 27. 

Dana, Samuel Whittlesey, 34. 

Dante, 28, 172. 

D'Auterive Marigny. 89, 123. 

J >avison. Judge, 25. 

■are Breakwater, S;. - 
Dennie, Joseph. 34 
Dennis, Col. Joseph J.. 24. 

1 lerrick, \V. S., I 20. 

Dixon, -j. 

Doane, Dr.. 141. 

Dorrance, Col. Benjamin, 17. . 

Dorrance. Ke\ . Mr. John. 151. 

Draper, Mrs., 109. 

Drake, Mrs., 151. 

Duponceau, Peter S., 86. 

Dupuy. Jean Francois, 12 note. 24. 

Dwight, Theodore, 34. 

Dwight, Timothy. 34. 

Dyer, Miss. 20. 

Dyer. Mr.. 1 - 1 . 

Eliza. Cousin, 151. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 18. 

Erie Canal. 88. 

Estill. Mr., of Virginia. 121. 

Estill, Mrs., 121. 

Evans. Henry S., Mr., 149. 

Everett. Edward. 91. 107. no. 114. 

115 note. 1-3. 137. 161, 165. 166. 
Ely. Jane. 190. 

Fell, Hannah, 190. 

Fell, Jesse, Judge, 22. 25, 35, 38. 

57, 61, 190. 
Fillmore, President, 160, 165. 
Floyd, John, of Virginia, 90. 
Forney, John W., 174. 
Forsyth. John, no. 
Franklin, Benjamin. 7. l8 4- 

Gage, Gen., 169. 

Galbreath. Charles B., 74, 75. 

Gallatin, Mr., 37. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 105, 106, 

t68, * v ;. 
Gatlin, liana, s8. 
Giles, Mr. William P... 121, 1 
Goldsmith, Oliver. 172. 
I iordon, Mary. 190. 
Gordon, Mr. 'William. [56. 
Gouverneur, Samuel L.. 142. 
Grant. Robert, 58. 
Cray, Thomas, 162. 
Green, Col. Samuel, ti, 12. 
Green, Thomas, 1 1. 
Crier, Robert C, 167. 
• iris wold, Roger, 34. 
Gutenberg, Johannes. 
Hagar, Godfrey, 62. 
Hale, Thomas, 94- 
Hamilton, Alexander. 
Hamilton, William, 3;. 
Hancock, Mary, [90 



77- 



;-i 



Hare. Charles W.. 47. 

Harrison, General, 71. 85, ill, 151. 

Hart. A. B., 185. 186. 

Harvey. Oscar Jewell, 35 note, 88 note, 

149.' 
Harwood, John (pseudonym of Charles 

Miner). 78. 
Hayne, Robert J.. 135. 
Hazleton Travellers. 157. 

r. William, 185. 
Hess, Mr.. 17. 
Hibler, William, 27, 151. 
Hillhouse, William. 6j. 
Hodgkjnson, Maria, see Overton, Mrs. 
Hollenback, Judge. 24, 25, 38, 151. 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 18. 
Hopkinson, Joseph, 116. 
Hubbard. Thomas, 11. 
Hughes, Col.. 163. 
Hull. General. 71. 
Huntington, Jedcdiah, 9. 
Huntington, Enoch, 26. 
llurlbut. Xaphtali, 24. 
Hyde, EzeKiel. 190. 
Hyde, Jabez. 18. 

Ingersoll. Edward, 144. 145. 

iiam. Samuel D., | 
Ingham. Sarah. 190. 
Internal Improvements, 87-89. 

Jackson, Gen'l, 76. 83, 84. 135, 137, 

139. 140. 141. 147. 
"Jacob." 151. 176. 

bs, Cyrus S.. 84. 
Jay, William, 216. 
Jefferson, Joseph, Sr., 36. 
Jefferson, Thomas. 32. 35. 3", 47- 59- 

85, 142. 
Jessup. Gen. Thomas S.. 96. 
nson, l'r., 141, 162, 172. 
•-on. Judge W'illiam. 121. 
Johnson. T. jl-'rancisj. 83. 

Kane, John K.. 167. 
Ketchem, Hiram. 94. 
Kinney. Newcorob, 10. 

Lamb. Col. Henry F.. 24. 
Lathrop. Samuel, 26. 
Law, John, 144. 

. ett. Mrs.. 151, 154. 
I A lb, Michael. 4?. 47. 49. 
Leonidas (pseudonym of Charb .- 

Miner). 33. 
Lewis, Joseph John, n; note. 125. 

127. 128. 
Lewis, Lete M.. 154. 
Lincoln. Abraham, ion. 174. 
Livingston. Edward, 146 note. 
Lundy, Benjamin, 186. 

M., Cousin Sarah. 124 

Madison. Tames. 143. 

Mallery, G.. 162. 

Manumission Society ot New York, 

Letter from. 94. 
Marshall. Chief Justice, yn. 80. 156, 

158, 170. 



INDIiX. 



193 



Mason, James, 185. 

MclHiffie, George E., 108, 109. 

McKean, Gov. Thomas, 32, 48, 49. 

McKeen, (Jen. Samuel, 116. 

.MiKicn, James, Mrs., 177. 

McKinney, Col.. 83. 

McLean, Tohn, of 111., 131. 

McLean, Tohn, of Ohio, 8i, 83, 1 19- 

McMaSter, John Bach, 184, 186, 187. 

Meade, Or.. 78. 

Meigs, Henry, 81, 95, 96, 188. 

Metcalfe, Gov. Thomas, m, 127, ' - s - 

Mifflin, Governor Thomas, 49. 

Miner, Ann Charlton. 21, 30, 44, 1 12, 

127. 
Miner, Anna Maria Stout, 31. 
Miner, Asher, 9, 11, 12, 20-3, 25. j6. 
28, 30, 31, 58, 77< 85. 114. "5. '27. 
128, 148, 152, 183, 190. 
Miner, Col. Asher. 21. 
Miner. Charles A, 31, 151, 154- 
Miner, Charles, passim. 
Ancestors of, 7-9. 
Children of, 189. 
Editor Newspapers: 

Federalist, Wilkes-Barre, 22, 27, 

30, 3'. 32, 33- 37. 3j8, 54. 55. 57- 

Gleaner, Wilkes-Barre, 52, 55, 57. 

59, 60, 67. 71, 76. 
True American, Philadelphia, 76. 
Chester and Delaware Federalist, 

West Chester, 77. 
Village Record, West Chester. 77- 
80, 85, 148, 149. 
In Congress, 83-130. 
In Pennsylvania Legislature, 41-53. 
Letters to His Wife, 106-129. 
Marriage Certificate of, 190. 
"Retreat," Life at. 150-155, 174-180. 
West Chester, Memories of, in, 14S- 
150. 
Miner, Charlotte, 124, 127, 154. 
Miner, Clement, Sr., 9. 
Miner, Clement, Jr., 9. 
Miner, E. Bowman, Dr., 151. 153, 160, 

180. 
Miner, Elizabeth D. Liggett, 151, 152, 

'54- 
Miner, Ellen, see Thomas, Ellen E. 

Miner, Emily R., 175. 

Miner, Helen, 152. 

Miner, Henry, 8. 

Miner. Hugh. 9. 

Miner, Julia, Mrs.. 154. 

Miner, Joseph W., 154, 163. 

Miner, Letitia Wright (Lete), 20, 21, 

25, 27, 28, 29, 44, 85, 103, 125. 1511 

152, 153, 162. 180, 190. 
Miner, Mary, (Daughter of Asher). 

152. 
Miner, Mary Sinton, 115. 
Miner, Nancy, 190. 
Miner, Sarah (Daughter of Asher). 

152. 
Miner, Sarah Kirkbride, 21, 29, 44, 

112, 124. 127, 150. 152. 157. '7". 

178, 179- 
Miner, Seth, 9. 
Miner, Dr. Thomas Wright. 11, 31. 



Miner. William IVnn, 6, 113, 124. 127. 

149, is 1, 15*1 154. '5 7- 
Minor, I homas, 7. 8, 9. 
Minor, William (litli century), 8. 
Minor, William 1 1683), 8. 
Mitchell, James ('., 114. 
Monroe, James, 107, 108, 109, 142, 143. 
Montreuil, Baron, 1 1 1. 
Moore, Hannah. 10. 
Moore, Thomas, 26. 
Morgan, William, ijS. 
Morse, John T.. 185. 
Moyster, Rev. Mr., 151. 

Nasby, Petroleum, 89. 
Nass, Eliza, 190. 
Nellie, (see Round). 
Nelson, Mary, 190. 
Nevin, Mr., 26. 
Norris, Dr., 22. 
North, Lord, 161, 170. 

Occom, Samson, 31. 

Ogle, Gen. Andrew J.. 46. 

Olive Branch, The, 170. 

Oliver, Anna Miner, 6, 175, 176, 183. 

Ossian, 77. 

( >swal3, Eleazer, 38. 

Otis, Harrison Gray, 34. 

Overton. Mrs Mary. 26, 151, 154. 

Ovid, 143. 

Packer. Samuel J., 60. 

Palmer, Nathan, 25, 

Palmer. Rusha, 190. 

Palmerston, Lord, 161. 

Panama Congress, 89-91, 110, 112, tig. 

Parke, Mr. 15. 

Parrish, Mrs. Charles. 180. 

Parsons, Dr. Usher, 74. 

Patterson, Gen. Robert, 163. 

Peale, Charles Willson, 36. 

Penn, Mr., 153. 

Penn, William, 154. 

Pennock, Abraham L., 119. 

Pennypacker, Matthias, 125. 

Perry, Ben, 190. 

Perry, Commodore, 68, 69, 71, 74, 

75. 76. 
Perry, Mary, 190. 
Pettibone, Oliver. 17. 
Pickering, Timothy, 34. 
Polk, President, 161. 
Poor Robert the Scribe. Essays from 

the Desk of. 57. 
Porter, Gen. Peter B., 144. 
Poulson, Zacariah, 34. 
Preston, General William. 109. 
Price, Eli K.. 167. '74- "82. 
Priestly, Dr. Joseph, 40. 

Ouincy. Josiah, 1S5. 

Ramsay, David, 156. 

Randolph, John, of Roanoke, v.. 114, 

117, 126. 
Rankin. Tohn, 76. 
Rawle. William. 105, 184. 188. 



194 



INDEX. 



Reed, John, 96. 

Reinhart, Rev. Edwin. 183. 

' Is, Enoch, 19. 
Rhodes, James Ford, 106, 185. 
Richard the Third, 8. 
Richardson, Charles F., 178. 
Richardson, Mrs. Charles F., 6, 108, 

178, 179. 
Robinson, John W., 61, 62. 
Rochester. Mr: \S\ R., 144. 
Russell, Major Benjamin. '4. 
Rogers, Professor Henry D.. 153. 
Rolf, Samuel. 34. 

isevelt, President, 39. I 
Ross, Tames, 32. 
Ross, William, 190. 
Round, Mrs. \V. M. F., 176, 181. 
Rush. Secretary Richard, 87. 122, 132. 

tii< 137. 138, 146, 162, 163. 
Ruskin, John. 175. 
Rutter. Nathaniel, 151. 

Schott, Charlotte, 190. 
Schott. John Paul, 35. 

uler, James. 
Searle, Mi~s. 154. 
Sergeant, John, 1 15. 
Seward. William H.. 163, 104. 167. 
Shakespeare. 19. 
Sheppard, Mr.. 151. 

maker, L. 1).. \-. 
Sigourney, Mrs., 164. 177. 
Silk Culture. N5-87. 
Silliman, Penjamin, 159. 
Simpson. Miss M. A.. 
Sinton, James, 121. 
Sisty, Amos, 155. 
Sitgreave, Samuel, 121. 
Slaughback, Sally, 151, 180. 
Slavery. 89-106, 164, 167-170, 184-188. 
Smith. Charles, 45, 
Smith. Gen. Samuel, m, 134. 
Snyder, Governor Simon, 43, 48. 73. 
Sprague, "Joe", is, 42. 

igue, Senator Peleg, 123. 135. 
Sperring, W. II.. 154. 

as, Miss, 25. 

nson, Shaker (Andrew I, 
Stewart. Andrew, 137. 
Stiles. Thomas T., 76. 

we, William L., 94, 158. 
Storrs, Henry R., 119. 
Story, Judge, 121. 

'. I 'r. Abraham, 31. 
Asher M.. 154. 
Sturdevant, W. II.. 1;. 
Sturdevant, Mrs. W. il.. 154, 178, 181. 
Summer. Charles. 1 1 7. 
Swift, Jonathan, 143. 
"Sylvia.'* 151, 

Tacitus, Cornelius. 143. 

Taft. William H., 59.' 

Taft, Mrs. William H.. to8. 

Tallerand, 137. 

Tallmadge. fames. 95. 

Taylor, John M., 40. 

Taylor, Zachary, 160, 164. 

Thomas. Anne. 152. 

Thomas. Capt. Samuel, 68. 71. 73. 



Thomas, Caroline D., 127. 

Thomas, Ellen E. [Mrs. Jesse], 21, 
28, 64 note, 86, 103, 116, 124, 152, 
154. 175. 176, 182. 

Thomas, George, 153. 

Thomas, Dr. Isaac, 115, 125, 127, 
128, 153. 

Thomas, Isaac M. t 6, 154, 177. 

Thomas. Jesse, 152. 1 

Thomas, Lete, see Mrs. W. H. Sturde- 
vant. 

Thomas. Letitia, see Mrs. William 
Butler. 

Thomas. Mary 153. 

Thomasin, Sister, 151. 

Thompson, Charles, 45. 

Thornhill, Mrs. M. C., 21. 

Thrale, Mrs., 141. 

Ticknor, George, 115 note, 153. 

Ticknor. Mrs. George, 153. 

Townsend, John, 181. 

Townsend, Sybilla, 181. 

Tracy. Edwin, 190. 

Tracy, Leonard, 13. 

Tracy. Peleg, Captain. 13. 

Tracy. Sidney, 54. 

Tracy, Uriah, 34. 

Trimble (Col. David?), S6. 110, 118 

Trimble. Judge Robert. 121. 

Truesdale, John, 190. 

Tyler, John, 85. 

Van Buren, Martin, 27, 85, 138, 160. 
Van Rensselaer, Gen., 108, 116, 125. 
Van Rensselaer, Jacob R., 34. 
Van Renssellaer, Philip S.. 34. 
Vaughan, John. 51. 
Von Hoist. EL, 185, 186. 
Walsh, Mr.. 145. 

Warn pole, Mr.. 1 1 2. 
Ward. Col. Aaron, 96, 97, 98. 
Washington, 145, 160, 164. 
Watt. James, 40. 

C. P.. 34. 84. 
Webster, Daniel, 90, 91, 103, 106, 107, 

113-116, 119, i2i, 131, 132, 135. 139. 

140, 160-162, 165. 

ster, Mrs. Daniel. 114. 
Webster. Noah, 34. 
Tweed, Thurlow, 77. 
Weems, John C, 102. 
Weiss. Jacob, 61. 
W< lies, Gideon, 171. 
Welles. Harriot. 190. 
W lies, Thomas, 190. 

[ohn, 159. 
Wheelock, Eleazer, 31. 32. 
Whipple. Nathan, 14. 
White, Josiah, 64. 
Who'll Turn Grindstone? 
Wilkes, Col. John, 173. 
Wilkes-Rarre, Sketches of. 23-^^. 
Williams. Lewis, 96, 121. 
Wilson, President, 59. 
Wilson, Senator Henry, 103, 167, t86. 
Winthron. John, 8. 
Wirt. \\ illiam, 144. 147. 
Wolfe, General, 1 
W "d ward, George W., 161, 162. 



I NDEX. 



'95 



Worden, Granny, 170. Wright. John Crafts, 97. 

Wordsworth, 160. Wright, Sally, 190. 

Wright, Grandmother (Mrs. Joseph), Wright. Sally Ann, 190. 

'54- Wright, Sarah, 190. 

Wright. Hanna, 190. Wright, Sarah Ann, 190. 

Wright, Mrs. Harrison. 1S0. Wright, Thomas, jo, ai, 23, 24, 28, 

Wright, Hendrick 15., 65, 66. 171. 36, 190. 

Wright, Josiah, 190. Wright, Willm, 190. 

Wright, Joseph, 24, 29. Wyoming, History of, 155-159. 
Wright, Josephine, 190. 

Wright, Letitia, see Miner, Letitia. Yost, Mr., 151. 

Wright, Mar> (married Asher Min- Nevin, Mr., 25. 

jo, 25, 28, 190. 



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